Showing posts with label Advancing Newman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Advancing Newman. Show all posts
Monday, October 7, 2019
Thursday, September 26, 2019
Advancing Paul Newman -- Part 7
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 6
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I have discussed the first eight chapters of Eleanor Bergstein's novel Advancing Paul Newman. I have read through page 102 of the 373-page novel.
I am critical of the novel, but I enjoy reading it. Much of it is difficult to understand, but so is much of Shakespeare and Joyce. I am reading the novel leisurely, stopping to figure out puzzles and re-reading.
I have become interested in the characters Kitsy and Ila -- two young women who have graduated from college and are trying to make their ways in New York City during the early 1960s.
The novel continues to jump back and forth between the early 1960s and 1968, but now I am focusing only on the 1960s parts and just glancing at the 1968 parts, which I will read later. I am interested in the insights into Eugene McCarthy's 1968 election campaign, but I prefer not to jump back and forth now between the two time periods.
=======
During the novel's first four chapters, I was puzzled by 1) whether the man killed in Vietnam was the husband of Kitsy or of some other woman and 2) a mysterious character named Louis. These puzzles were solved for me in Chapter Five, which mentions that Kitsy, by 1968, had had two husbands. So, Kitsy's second husband was killed in Vietnam and his name was Louis.
I expect that the death of Louis in Vietnam will cause Kitsy to join McCarthy's election campaign.
=======
I am becoming more and more convinced that the novel is largely autobiographical. One indication is that many events in the novel happen at the same time as specific real events.
As one consequence, the novel is cluttered with thoughts and incidents that distract the reader from grasping a main narrative.
As an example of unnecessary distraction, the novel tells in some detail how Kitsy went to buy a ribbon from a milliner named "Mr. Louis". This name appears when the reader still is puzzling about the mysterious Louis. I had to stop and wonder whether the Mr. Louis and the Louis are the same character (they are not). I assume that Bergstein simply copied the name Mr. Louis from her diary, not realizing that the name might confuse readers.
=======
So far, the novel has not discussed Kitsy's family. By the end of Chapter Eight, only Kitsy's father has been mentioned -- and only very briefly a couple of times.
=======
The fact that Kitsy and Ila are ethnically Jewish is discussed during Chapter Two, when they are touring Europe in 1959. Otherwise through Chapter Eight, their Jewish ethnicity is not mentioned and seems to be irrelevant to their lives. During those chapters, each girl has one serious boyfriend. Ila has Loren (last name never mentioned), and Kitsy has Arthur Cornell. Neither boyfriend seems to be Jewish, and neither girl seems to care.
Both girl want to have boyfriends, but neither girl obsesses about getting married soon. Ila seems more interested in marrying than Kitsy does. Kitsy's main aspiration is to become a professional writer. Kitsy clearly wants to postpone marriage and motherhood.
Ila is rather sexual and even promiscuous, and sexual enjoyment is a major reason why she wants to have a boyfriend. Kitsy seems to want a boyfriend rather more for intellectual, social, status and appearance reasons. She enjoys sex, but considers it to be a secondary consideration in her boyfriend relationship and sometimes criticizes him along sexual lines to herself and even to other women.
Neither girl is eager to give birth and raise children. In particular, Kitsy's basic conflict with Arthur seems to be that he wants her to become a housewife soon and then to write at home only in her spare time.
=======
I continue to develop the idea that Ila represents a manic-depressive mood disorder. For example, Ila seems to become depressed after Kitsy moves into Ila's apartment. Then, impulsively, she goes on a round-the-world trip. Ila is drifting through her life, with no clear goals beyond having a boyfriend.
In contrast, Kitsy is rather self-controlled in pursuing her ambitious career to become a professional writer. She writes a detailed diary. She improves her personal appearance and conduct in order to earn promotions in the literary agency that employs her. She is calculating and somewhat exploitative in her relationship with Arthur. She delays in her decision to dump him, as long as she continues to benefit from the relationship.
Ila is a girl who swings back and forth between manic and depressive states, and Kitsy is a girl who remains largely in a normal mood state.
=======
Although Jewish ethnicity has been mentioned only in Chapter Two, Philip Roth's 1959 novel Goodbye, Columbus is mentioned in Chapter Eight. The circumstances are that Kitsy, Ila, Arthur and some of their acquaintances are spending time at a beach house in August 1962. A paperback copy of the book happens to be in the beach house, and it becomes the subject of a discussion. It seems that most of the people there have read the book or at least are familiar with it.
This general familiarity with Roth's book indicates subtly that many of the people at the beach house are ethnically Jewish. In this and other books, Roth mainly portrays secular Jews.
According to the Wikipedia article about Goodbye, Columbus, the book "deals with the concerns of second and third-generation assimilated American Jews as they leave the ethnic ghettos of their parents and grandparents and go on to college, to white-collar professions, and to life in the suburbs." In particular, the book is cynical and mocking about such Jews' romantic relationships, marriages and families.
I assume that Bergstein herself was such a secular Jew and that she admired Roth's novels, which were critically and commercially successful.
Goodbye, Columbus is summarized and analyzed superbly by the Shmoop website. I have not read the novel itself (or watched the 1969 movie), but I did study the Shmoop treatment. I relate that novel to Bergstein's character Kitsy as follows.
The protagonist of Goodbye, Columbus is 23-year-old Neil Krugman (born in about 1935) who studied literature and philosophy in college, but did not graduate and now is working in a public library. He becomes romantically involved with Brenda Patimkin, a wealthy family's beautiful, intelligent, capable daughter, who is attending a prestigious college but is spending summer vacation at home with her family.
The romance between Neil and Brenda lasts through the summer. She would be happy to marry him, and he would be hired into the family business and would enjoy a financially comfortable married life with Brenda. However, Neil and Brenda break up at the end of the summer, right before she returns to college. He remains working at the public library, philosophizing about his life.
The apparent reason for their breakup is an argument about whether she should use a diaphragm when they engage in sexual intercourse. They apparently had used condoms during the first weeks of their sexual relationship, but he wants to enjoy direct skin-to-skin contact between his penis and her vaginal walls. Brenda eventually relents to getting a diaphragm, which she uses for a while, but then she "forgets" it at home when she meets him at an out-of-town event. Neil gets mad at Brenda. In addition, Brenda's mother finds the diaphragm in the home, and she too gets mad at Brenda. These diaphragm arguments ultimately cause Neil and Brenda to break up.
When I compare Goodbye, Columbus with Advancing Paul Newman, I see some similarities between Neil and Kitsy. Like Neil, Kitsy is conflicted about an opportunity to marry well into a family that surely will be happy and prosperous. Neil and Kitsy really want to become independent, deep thinkers who are willing to defer happiness while they struggle to become writers who will "make waves" in the reading public.
Neil allows his promising relationship with Brenda to break up over a selfish, silly argument about using a diaphragm. Kitsy is breaking up her own promising relationship with Arthur, using a concocted excuse that he should go back to his previous girlfriend, who has married another man.
Both Neil and Kitsy are subverting their own marriage prospects in devious manners. The subversions are partially conscious and intentional, but also are largely selfish and reckless. They essentially are manipulating their romantic partners into breaking up the relationships -- as if the partners were the culprits.
=======
I will continue my discussion of Advancing Paul Newman in my Part 8.
======
Scenes from the 1969 movie.
(In the 1959 novel, the alternative to the diaphragm was condoms, but in the 1969 movie, the alternative becomes birth-control pills.)
=======
I have discussed the first eight chapters of Eleanor Bergstein's novel Advancing Paul Newman. I have read through page 102 of the 373-page novel.
I am critical of the novel, but I enjoy reading it. Much of it is difficult to understand, but so is much of Shakespeare and Joyce. I am reading the novel leisurely, stopping to figure out puzzles and re-reading.
I have become interested in the characters Kitsy and Ila -- two young women who have graduated from college and are trying to make their ways in New York City during the early 1960s.
The novel continues to jump back and forth between the early 1960s and 1968, but now I am focusing only on the 1960s parts and just glancing at the 1968 parts, which I will read later. I am interested in the insights into Eugene McCarthy's 1968 election campaign, but I prefer not to jump back and forth now between the two time periods.
=======
During the novel's first four chapters, I was puzzled by 1) whether the man killed in Vietnam was the husband of Kitsy or of some other woman and 2) a mysterious character named Louis. These puzzles were solved for me in Chapter Five, which mentions that Kitsy, by 1968, had had two husbands. So, Kitsy's second husband was killed in Vietnam and his name was Louis.
I expect that the death of Louis in Vietnam will cause Kitsy to join McCarthy's election campaign.
=======
I am becoming more and more convinced that the novel is largely autobiographical. One indication is that many events in the novel happen at the same time as specific real events.
* Nikita Khruschev spoke at the United NationsI take these examples off the top of my head. If I went went through the book carefully again, I could make a much longer list and develop a detailed chronology of the novel's story. It's apparent that Bergstein wrote a diary during her twenties and thirties and used it constantly while she wrote this novel.
* Nelson Rockefeller announced that he intended to divorce his wife.
* The movies or Broadway plays Cold Blood, Savage Eye, Gigi, etc. were playing.
* Marilyn Monroe died.
As one consequence, the novel is cluttered with thoughts and incidents that distract the reader from grasping a main narrative.
As an example of unnecessary distraction, the novel tells in some detail how Kitsy went to buy a ribbon from a milliner named "Mr. Louis". This name appears when the reader still is puzzling about the mysterious Louis. I had to stop and wonder whether the Mr. Louis and the Louis are the same character (they are not). I assume that Bergstein simply copied the name Mr. Louis from her diary, not realizing that the name might confuse readers.
=======
So far, the novel has not discussed Kitsy's family. By the end of Chapter Eight, only Kitsy's father has been mentioned -- and only very briefly a couple of times.
=======
The fact that Kitsy and Ila are ethnically Jewish is discussed during Chapter Two, when they are touring Europe in 1959. Otherwise through Chapter Eight, their Jewish ethnicity is not mentioned and seems to be irrelevant to their lives. During those chapters, each girl has one serious boyfriend. Ila has Loren (last name never mentioned), and Kitsy has Arthur Cornell. Neither boyfriend seems to be Jewish, and neither girl seems to care.
Both girl want to have boyfriends, but neither girl obsesses about getting married soon. Ila seems more interested in marrying than Kitsy does. Kitsy's main aspiration is to become a professional writer. Kitsy clearly wants to postpone marriage and motherhood.
Ila is rather sexual and even promiscuous, and sexual enjoyment is a major reason why she wants to have a boyfriend. Kitsy seems to want a boyfriend rather more for intellectual, social, status and appearance reasons. She enjoys sex, but considers it to be a secondary consideration in her boyfriend relationship and sometimes criticizes him along sexual lines to herself and even to other women.
Neither girl is eager to give birth and raise children. In particular, Kitsy's basic conflict with Arthur seems to be that he wants her to become a housewife soon and then to write at home only in her spare time.
=======
I continue to develop the idea that Ila represents a manic-depressive mood disorder. For example, Ila seems to become depressed after Kitsy moves into Ila's apartment. Then, impulsively, she goes on a round-the-world trip. Ila is drifting through her life, with no clear goals beyond having a boyfriend.
In contrast, Kitsy is rather self-controlled in pursuing her ambitious career to become a professional writer. She writes a detailed diary. She improves her personal appearance and conduct in order to earn promotions in the literary agency that employs her. She is calculating and somewhat exploitative in her relationship with Arthur. She delays in her decision to dump him, as long as she continues to benefit from the relationship.
Ila is a girl who swings back and forth between manic and depressive states, and Kitsy is a girl who remains largely in a normal mood state.
=======
Although Jewish ethnicity has been mentioned only in Chapter Two, Philip Roth's 1959 novel Goodbye, Columbus is mentioned in Chapter Eight. The circumstances are that Kitsy, Ila, Arthur and some of their acquaintances are spending time at a beach house in August 1962. A paperback copy of the book happens to be in the beach house, and it becomes the subject of a discussion. It seems that most of the people there have read the book or at least are familiar with it.
 |
| Paperback cover of Goodbye, Columbus |
According to the Wikipedia article about Goodbye, Columbus, the book "deals with the concerns of second and third-generation assimilated American Jews as they leave the ethnic ghettos of their parents and grandparents and go on to college, to white-collar professions, and to life in the suburbs." In particular, the book is cynical and mocking about such Jews' romantic relationships, marriages and families.
Goodbye, Columbus is summarized and analyzed superbly by the Shmoop website. I have not read the novel itself (or watched the 1969 movie), but I did study the Shmoop treatment. I relate that novel to Bergstein's character Kitsy as follows.
The protagonist of Goodbye, Columbus is 23-year-old Neil Krugman (born in about 1935) who studied literature and philosophy in college, but did not graduate and now is working in a public library. He becomes romantically involved with Brenda Patimkin, a wealthy family's beautiful, intelligent, capable daughter, who is attending a prestigious college but is spending summer vacation at home with her family.
The romance between Neil and Brenda lasts through the summer. She would be happy to marry him, and he would be hired into the family business and would enjoy a financially comfortable married life with Brenda. However, Neil and Brenda break up at the end of the summer, right before she returns to college. He remains working at the public library, philosophizing about his life.
The apparent reason for their breakup is an argument about whether she should use a diaphragm when they engage in sexual intercourse. They apparently had used condoms during the first weeks of their sexual relationship, but he wants to enjoy direct skin-to-skin contact between his penis and her vaginal walls. Brenda eventually relents to getting a diaphragm, which she uses for a while, but then she "forgets" it at home when she meets him at an out-of-town event. Neil gets mad at Brenda. In addition, Brenda's mother finds the diaphragm in the home, and she too gets mad at Brenda. These diaphragm arguments ultimately cause Neil and Brenda to break up.
When I compare Goodbye, Columbus with Advancing Paul Newman, I see some similarities between Neil and Kitsy. Like Neil, Kitsy is conflicted about an opportunity to marry well into a family that surely will be happy and prosperous. Neil and Kitsy really want to become independent, deep thinkers who are willing to defer happiness while they struggle to become writers who will "make waves" in the reading public.
Neil allows his promising relationship with Brenda to break up over a selfish, silly argument about using a diaphragm. Kitsy is breaking up her own promising relationship with Arthur, using a concocted excuse that he should go back to his previous girlfriend, who has married another man.
Both Neil and Kitsy are subverting their own marriage prospects in devious manners. The subversions are partially conscious and intentional, but also are largely selfish and reckless. They essentially are manipulating their romantic partners into breaking up the relationships -- as if the partners were the culprits.
=======
I will continue my discussion of Advancing Paul Newman in my Part 8.
======
Scenes from the 1969 movie.
(In the 1959 novel, the alternative to the diaphragm was condoms, but in the 1969 movie, the alternative becomes birth-control pills.)
Monday, September 23, 2019
Advancing Paul Newman -- Part 6
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5
=======
I have discussed the first four chapters of Eleanor Bergstein's novel Advancing Paul Newman. In this part, I will discuss Chapters Five through Eight.
=======
A recapitulation:
After Karen "Kitsy" Frank returned from her European tour at the end of the summer of 1959, she resumed living with her parents. She began dating an intelligent, successful lawyer, Arthur Cornell, who is several years older than Kitsy and who wants to marry and begin raising a family in the near future. Since Kitsy wants to write professionally, Arthur figures that she will be able to write in her spare time while staying home as a housewife.
In the meantime, Kitsy works for a while in the publishing business and then gets a job in public television. There she aspires to adapt classics of literature into television dramas.
Kitsy become disenchanted with Arthur and intends to dump him. By snooping in his stuff, she discovers that he has been corresponding with his former girlfriend, who has married another man but regrets her marriage and wants to return to Arthur. Kitsy intends to advise Arthur to break up with herself and to return to that girlfriend.
Meanwhile, Ila Rappaport has fallen in love with an artsy man, Loren, who has dumped her and moved to Europe in the autumn of 1960.
Kitsy and Ila agree that Kitsy will move into Ila's apartment at the end of January 1961.
=======
Kitsy becomes disenchanted with her public-television job. She would rather work in the written-literature business. She gets a job as a secretary to literary agent and loves the job. Furthermore, the agent's personal assistant is pregnant and intends to quit her job when she approaches her due date. Kitsy hopes that she will be promoted into that personal-assistant job.
At her new job, she now goes by her proper name Karen, not her nickname Kitsy. She puts much more effort into her professional appearance, improves her wardrobe, her hairstyle and her cosmetics.
Kitsy struggles to cope with the demands of working for the literary agent. She has to master, for example, the legalities of contracts between publishers and writers. She has to manage many communications
======
Kitsy and Arthur agree to a three-month separation (not their first separation). They stay in contact, but they no longer date each other and are free to date others.
Kitsy and Arthur disagree about the New York City election for mayor, which took place on November 7, 1961. Kitsy supports the re-election of the incumbent mayor, Robert Wagner, and Arthur opposes the re-election. Arthur has not obtained a job in the Kennedy Administration, so instead he has gone to work as a lawyer for the New York state government.
Kitsy has difficulty making up her mind about whether she should get back together with Arthur. She has come to depend on his confident knowledge about politics and other subjects. She feels that he is intellectually superior to herself and does admire that quality in him.
=======
Meanwhile, Ila lets her own appearance go. Living together, Kitsy and Ila gradually get on each other's nerves. One morning, Kitsy and Ila are talking with each other in a disagreeable manner, and Kitsy remarks that she would like to be able to travel around the world.
Kitsy's remark gives Ila the idea of traveling around the world herself. Ila happens to received $35,000 (the equivalent of $300,000 in 2019) as an insurance benefit after her father died. Therefore, Ila uses some of that money to travel around the world. The novel tells about her visits to Hawaii, Japan, Hong Kong, Thailand, India, Israel, Greece, Spain, Italy, France and England.
As soon as Ila returns to the USA, she travels to Florida, where she spends a month with her mother. Then Ila returns to New York City, where she resumes living in the apartment she shares with Kitsy.
======
Soon after Ila returns from Florida to New York City, Marilyn Monroe dies, on August 5, 1962. Therefore, I figure (from the month in Florida) that Ila ended her around-the-world trip at about the beginning of July 1962.
At about the time when Ila returns from her round-the-world trip, Kitsy begins to write a short story. She writes it in the first person, as if she is describing her own trip around the world. She intends to question Ila about the trip and then to use some of Ila's observations and stories in the short story. Since, however, Ila goes immediately to Florida for a month, only the first few paragraphs of Kitsy's short story get written.
In early August 1962, about the time when Marilyn Monroe dies, Ila has returned from Florida. Although Kitsy has intended, for months, to break up with Arthur, she still spends some time with him. Kitsy, Arthur and Ila travel to visit some friends who have a house near a beach. Some of the women friends are pregnant or are raising young children. Kitsy is somewhat repulsed; she does not want to get pregnant and become a mother in the near future.
======
While Kitsy, Arthur and Ila are at the beach house, they and their mutual friends discuss Philip Roth's novel Goodbye, Columbus, because a copy of the novel happens to be in the house. It seems that the book has been read by -- or at least is familiar to -- several of the people at the beach house.
Kitsy has read Roth's novel, and in her discussion of it she focuses on a description of a refrigerator being full of fruit. Others in the discussion focus on a situation where a young woman "forgot" to bring her diaphragm along to a vacation with her boyfriend.
(I will discuss Roth's novel Goodbye, Columbus more in my next post.)
======
At the beach house, Ila becomes infatuated with a psychiatrist (he is not named) who is among the guests. Ila catches his eye. She puts a record onto a record player and demonstrates some twist-dance moves she learned during her recent visit to Europe. She talks with the psychiatrist briefly and arranges to ride back into Manhattan alone with him in his car.
Kitsy is annoyed because she herself had been looking forward to spending uninterrupted time with Ila in order to question her about her round-the-world trip. Kitsy foresees that now Ila will be spending all her time instead with the psychiatrist during the coming days.
Kitsy has to ride from the beach house back to Manhattan alone with Arthur in his car. She has become repulsed by him.
Kitsy and Ila still share an apartment, but Ila has been gone on a round-the-world trip and then on a month-long visit to her mother in Florida and now is going off alone with the psychiatrist.
=====
I will continue in Part 7.
======
=======
I have discussed the first four chapters of Eleanor Bergstein's novel Advancing Paul Newman. In this part, I will discuss Chapters Five through Eight.
=======
A recapitulation:
After Karen "Kitsy" Frank returned from her European tour at the end of the summer of 1959, she resumed living with her parents. She began dating an intelligent, successful lawyer, Arthur Cornell, who is several years older than Kitsy and who wants to marry and begin raising a family in the near future. Since Kitsy wants to write professionally, Arthur figures that she will be able to write in her spare time while staying home as a housewife.
In the meantime, Kitsy works for a while in the publishing business and then gets a job in public television. There she aspires to adapt classics of literature into television dramas.
Kitsy become disenchanted with Arthur and intends to dump him. By snooping in his stuff, she discovers that he has been corresponding with his former girlfriend, who has married another man but regrets her marriage and wants to return to Arthur. Kitsy intends to advise Arthur to break up with herself and to return to that girlfriend.
Meanwhile, Ila Rappaport has fallen in love with an artsy man, Loren, who has dumped her and moved to Europe in the autumn of 1960.
Kitsy and Ila agree that Kitsy will move into Ila's apartment at the end of January 1961.
=======
Kitsy becomes disenchanted with her public-television job. She would rather work in the written-literature business. She gets a job as a secretary to literary agent and loves the job. Furthermore, the agent's personal assistant is pregnant and intends to quit her job when she approaches her due date. Kitsy hopes that she will be promoted into that personal-assistant job.
At her new job, she now goes by her proper name Karen, not her nickname Kitsy. She puts much more effort into her professional appearance, improves her wardrobe, her hairstyle and her cosmetics.
Kitsy struggles to cope with the demands of working for the literary agent. She has to master, for example, the legalities of contracts between publishers and writers. She has to manage many communications
Kitsy had become avaricious, competitive, fully engaged in her work, ....Gradually, however, Kitsy did learn to cope with her work.
Glancng down a contract, Kitsy made crisp notations in the margin. Later she couldn't understand them ... She was bewildered, it was gibberish.
... Her mind [was] full of itchy little reminders of options coming up, clauses to be checked against those in previously negotiated contracts, percentages to be figures against grosses. ....
She had .... evenings when she had a lump in her throat and she went home and stayed with her parents and her father drove her to work in the morning.
======
Kitsy and Arthur agree to a three-month separation (not their first separation). They stay in contact, but they no longer date each other and are free to date others.
Kitsy and Arthur disagree about the New York City election for mayor, which took place on November 7, 1961. Kitsy supports the re-election of the incumbent mayor, Robert Wagner, and Arthur opposes the re-election. Arthur has not obtained a job in the Kennedy Administration, so instead he has gone to work as a lawyer for the New York state government.
Kitsy has difficulty making up her mind about whether she should get back together with Arthur. She has come to depend on his confident knowledge about politics and other subjects. She feels that he is intellectually superior to herself and does admire that quality in him.
Meanwhile, Ila lets her own appearance go. Living together, Kitsy and Ila gradually get on each other's nerves. One morning, Kitsy and Ila are talking with each other in a disagreeable manner, and Kitsy remarks that she would like to be able to travel around the world.
Kitsy's remark gives Ila the idea of traveling around the world herself. Ila happens to received $35,000 (the equivalent of $300,000 in 2019) as an insurance benefit after her father died. Therefore, Ila uses some of that money to travel around the world. The novel tells about her visits to Hawaii, Japan, Hong Kong, Thailand, India, Israel, Greece, Spain, Italy, France and England.
As soon as Ila returns to the USA, she travels to Florida, where she spends a month with her mother. Then Ila returns to New York City, where she resumes living in the apartment she shares with Kitsy.
======
Soon after Ila returns from Florida to New York City, Marilyn Monroe dies, on August 5, 1962. Therefore, I figure (from the month in Florida) that Ila ended her around-the-world trip at about the beginning of July 1962.
At about the time when Ila returns from her round-the-world trip, Kitsy begins to write a short story. She writes it in the first person, as if she is describing her own trip around the world. She intends to question Ila about the trip and then to use some of Ila's observations and stories in the short story. Since, however, Ila goes immediately to Florida for a month, only the first few paragraphs of Kitsy's short story get written.
In early August 1962, about the time when Marilyn Monroe dies, Ila has returned from Florida. Although Kitsy has intended, for months, to break up with Arthur, she still spends some time with him. Kitsy, Arthur and Ila travel to visit some friends who have a house near a beach. Some of the women friends are pregnant or are raising young children. Kitsy is somewhat repulsed; she does not want to get pregnant and become a mother in the near future.
At the beach they [Kitsy and a female acquaintance] went into special cabanas where they changed their suits, and Nikki's nipples were huge and spreading out and uneven -- she was nursing -- and her stomach was still blue, and the baby had crossed eyes and shrieked till her skin turned purple and pink and blotchy.Kitsy figures that she has been involved with Arthur for about three years -- since she returned from her European tour in the late summer of 1959. She decides yet again that she must break up with him.
======
While Kitsy, Arthur and Ila are at the beach house, they and their mutual friends discuss Philip Roth's novel Goodbye, Columbus, because a copy of the novel happens to be in the house. It seems that the book has been read by -- or at least is familiar to -- several of the people at the beach house.
Kitsy has read Roth's novel, and in her discussion of it she focuses on a description of a refrigerator being full of fruit. Others in the discussion focus on a situation where a young woman "forgot" to bring her diaphragm along to a vacation with her boyfriend.
(I will discuss Roth's novel Goodbye, Columbus more in my next post.)
======
At the beach house, Ila becomes infatuated with a psychiatrist (he is not named) who is among the guests. Ila catches his eye. She puts a record onto a record player and demonstrates some twist-dance moves she learned during her recent visit to Europe. She talks with the psychiatrist briefly and arranges to ride back into Manhattan alone with him in his car.
Kitsy is annoyed because she herself had been looking forward to spending uninterrupted time with Ila in order to question her about her round-the-world trip. Kitsy foresees that now Ila will be spending all her time instead with the psychiatrist during the coming days.
Kitsy has to ride from the beach house back to Manhattan alone with Arthur in his car. She has become repulsed by him.
... if Arthur touched her she might not be able to keep herself from shuddering.During the car ride, Arthur insults Kitsy and badmouths a new mother who had been at the beach house.
He said "all right what was going on today Kitsy, I saw that look on your face, what was going through your mean ambitious little mind?Kitsy and Arthur are still in their three-month separation, but they still find themselves spending time with each other -- for example, during this visit to the beach house.
... "That cow [the new mother] wheeling around and around [with a baby carriage] afraid she'll have to talk to the other mothers ... who is she anyway that any of the other girls would want to talk to her that homely cow."
Kitsy was frightened by the tone and said "I'm sorry I was a little off. I mean somehow it really upset me about Marilyn Monroe -- ridiculous I know but it stayed with me all day."
"You're kidding," Arthur said, "You've got to be kidding."
And she wasn't sure if he was sarcastic and if so how.
Kitsy and Ila still share an apartment, but Ila has been gone on a round-the-world trip and then on a month-long visit to her mother in Florida and now is going off alone with the psychiatrist.
=====
I will continue in Part 7.
======
Tuesday, September 17, 2019
Advancing Paul Newman -- Part 5
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4
=======
I have studied the first four chapters of Eleanor Bergstein's novel Advancing Paul Newman. Before I continue into Chapter Five, I will continue to recapitulate here what I have learned so far.
=======
After Kitsy and Ila return from Europe to the USA in the late summer of 1959, they keep in touch. Kitsy resumes living with her parents, and Ila moves into a New York City apartment that she shares with a roommate.
Ila soon is hired to work as an assistant to a casting director. On behalf of Hollywood movie studios, he recruits and evaluates actors in New York City.
Ila meets and falls in love with a man named Loren, who grew up in an artistic family and lived much of his life in Europe. Loren soon loses her virginity to Loren (she had not lost it to the German photographer). Loren intends to marry Ila, and she is happy. Her manic-depressive swings -- which previously had happened without apparent cause -- seem to end. Instead, her emotions became linked reasonably to her relationship with Loren.
======
Living with her parents, Kitsy begins to work in the publishing business in New York. She is promoted within the business, but slowly.
Meanwhile, Kitsy becomes romantically involved with a lawyer named Arthur Cornell. He is several years older than her, successful and very knowledgeable about history, current affairs and most other subjects. In that regard, Kitsy feels inferior to Arthur.
They met each other accidentally while waiting in line for a Broadway play. He asked her whether she wanted "to make waves" in her life, and she replied that she indeed wanted to make waves through her writing.
Arthur is looking for a wife who will give birth and raise his children. He figures that she can stay at home and write in her spare time while being a housewife. Kitsy eventually wants to get married and raise children -- but not now. Arthur is an attractive and nice man, but she cannot fall in love with him.
However, Kitsy becomes involved with Arthur romantically and sexually, because she likes her lifestyle with him -- visiting museums, watching Broadway plays, socializing with his sophisticated friends.
Arthur advises Kitsy to apply for a job at a local public television station. She is hired. She looks forward to a possible opportunity to get involved in developing public-television adaptations of literature classics.
======
During 1960, Kitsy becomes involved in the political campaign of Adlai Stevenson, a candidate for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. In July 1960, however, Stevenson drops out of the race and asks his supporters to support John Kennedy. Arthur had supported Kennedy from the beginning of the campaign and expects to get a good job in the Federal Government if Kennedy wins the election.
Ila has been dumped by Loren, and Ila's roommate is away, going through a long medical treatment. In the autumn of 1960, Ila invites Kitsy to move into her half-empty apartment. Kitsy agrees, but for unexplained reasons cannot move into the apartment until January 1961.
Although Kitsy intends to break up with Arthur, she stays with him into January 1961. Her 23rd birthday is on January 20, 1961, the day of President Kennedy's inauguration, and Arthur takes her from New York to Washington DC to attend an inauguration ball. Kitsy enjoys the experience. She greatly admires Jacqueline Kennedy and is thrilled to see her briefly at the ball.
======
After January 20, 1961, Kitsy moves in with Ila. Kitsy gripes to Ila about Arthur, and Ila gripes to Kitsy about Loren, even though he moved away to Europe several months ago.
Although Kitsy is living with Ila, she is trying to figure out a good excuse to break up with Arthur. She cannot simply tell him that she does not want to quit her public-television career in order to become a house, even if she might be able to write at home.
Kitsy tells herself that Arthur lacks appreciation for the arts. He is interested only in history, politics and law.
Arthur is applying for various lawyer jobs in the new Kennedy Administration. If he does get such a job, then he will move to Washington DC and will expect Kity to relocate with him.
When Kitsy is in Arthur's apartment, she snoops through his stuff and finds his correspondence with his previous girlfriend. When Arthur had been attending Yale Law School, he had become romantically involved with Rosalind, a student at Vassar women's college. Gradually Arthur had become less attentive toward Rosalind, however, and so Rosalind had dumped him and married another man. On her honeymoon, Rosalind had regretted her decision and had begun writing letters to Arthur asking him to take her back.
Kitsy is glad to discover this situation. Now she will be able to dump Arthur, advising him to go back to Rosalind, his true love.
======
That is the situation at the end of the novel's Chapter Four.
======
I will continue my analysis of the novel in my Part 6.
======
=======
I have studied the first four chapters of Eleanor Bergstein's novel Advancing Paul Newman. Before I continue into Chapter Five, I will continue to recapitulate here what I have learned so far.
=======
After Kitsy and Ila return from Europe to the USA in the late summer of 1959, they keep in touch. Kitsy resumes living with her parents, and Ila moves into a New York City apartment that she shares with a roommate.
Ila soon is hired to work as an assistant to a casting director. On behalf of Hollywood movie studios, he recruits and evaluates actors in New York City.
Ila meets and falls in love with a man named Loren, who grew up in an artistic family and lived much of his life in Europe. Loren soon loses her virginity to Loren (she had not lost it to the German photographer). Loren intends to marry Ila, and she is happy. Her manic-depressive swings -- which previously had happened without apparent cause -- seem to end. Instead, her emotions became linked reasonably to her relationship with Loren.
All at once the free-floating feelings that Ila had detested ... that Ila knew counted for nothing because they were attached to nothing were attached to Loren. Depression rage happiness were no longer in limbo -- there was something to pin them on.Loren would like to become an architect, but he does not want to study the prerequisites, such as drafting. He seems to be unemployed, living off his mother's money. For a while, Loren intends to marry Ila, but eventually he becomes disenchanted with her. In the summer of 1960, Loren breaks up with Kitsy and moves to Europe.
======
Living with her parents, Kitsy begins to work in the publishing business in New York. She is promoted within the business, but slowly.
Meanwhile, Kitsy becomes romantically involved with a lawyer named Arthur Cornell. He is several years older than her, successful and very knowledgeable about history, current affairs and most other subjects. In that regard, Kitsy feels inferior to Arthur.
They met each other accidentally while waiting in line for a Broadway play. He asked her whether she wanted "to make waves" in her life, and she replied that she indeed wanted to make waves through her writing.
Arthur is looking for a wife who will give birth and raise his children. He figures that she can stay at home and write in her spare time while being a housewife. Kitsy eventually wants to get married and raise children -- but not now. Arthur is an attractive and nice man, but she cannot fall in love with him.
However, Kitsy becomes involved with Arthur romantically and sexually, because she likes her lifestyle with him -- visiting museums, watching Broadway plays, socializing with his sophisticated friends.
Arthur advises Kitsy to apply for a job at a local public television station. She is hired. She looks forward to a possible opportunity to get involved in developing public-television adaptations of literature classics.
======
During 1960, Kitsy becomes involved in the political campaign of Adlai Stevenson, a candidate for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. In July 1960, however, Stevenson drops out of the race and asks his supporters to support John Kennedy. Arthur had supported Kennedy from the beginning of the campaign and expects to get a good job in the Federal Government if Kennedy wins the election.
Ila has been dumped by Loren, and Ila's roommate is away, going through a long medical treatment. In the autumn of 1960, Ila invites Kitsy to move into her half-empty apartment. Kitsy agrees, but for unexplained reasons cannot move into the apartment until January 1961.
Although Kitsy intends to break up with Arthur, she stays with him into January 1961. Her 23rd birthday is on January 20, 1961, the day of President Kennedy's inauguration, and Arthur takes her from New York to Washington DC to attend an inauguration ball. Kitsy enjoys the experience. She greatly admires Jacqueline Kennedy and is thrilled to see her briefly at the ball.
======
After January 20, 1961, Kitsy moves in with Ila. Kitsy gripes to Ila about Arthur, and Ila gripes to Kitsy about Loren, even though he moved away to Europe several months ago.
Although Kitsy is living with Ila, she is trying to figure out a good excuse to break up with Arthur. She cannot simply tell him that she does not want to quit her public-television career in order to become a house, even if she might be able to write at home.
Kitsy tells herself that Arthur lacks appreciation for the arts. He is interested only in history, politics and law.
Arthur is applying for various lawyer jobs in the new Kennedy Administration. If he does get such a job, then he will move to Washington DC and will expect Kity to relocate with him.
When Kitsy is in Arthur's apartment, she snoops through his stuff and finds his correspondence with his previous girlfriend. When Arthur had been attending Yale Law School, he had become romantically involved with Rosalind, a student at Vassar women's college. Gradually Arthur had become less attentive toward Rosalind, however, and so Rosalind had dumped him and married another man. On her honeymoon, Rosalind had regretted her decision and had begun writing letters to Arthur asking him to take her back.
Kitsy is glad to discover this situation. Now she will be able to dump Arthur, advising him to go back to Rosalind, his true love.
======
That is the situation at the end of the novel's Chapter Four.
======
I will continue my analysis of the novel in my Part 6.
======
Monday, September 16, 2019
Advancing Paul Newman -- Part 4
Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3
=======
I have studied the first four chapters of Eleanor Bergstein's novel Advancing Paul Newman. Before I continue into Chapter Five, I will recapitulate here what I have learned so far.
=======
Karen "Kitsy" Frank was born on January 20, 1938 -- in the same year when Bergstein was born.
Kitsy's father is a doctor, perhaps a psychiatrist. On one occasion, two Jewish young women in the neighborhood came to her father at home and asked him to commit their mother to a facility. He refused to do so, saying that he "didn't want the responsibility".
Kitsy's family is ethnically Jewish, but is not involved in religion. When Kitsy was 11 years old, she became involved briefly in a Young Zionist group, which was led by an Israeli female named Dina, who seems to be somewhat older. From Dina, Kitsy learned to dance the hora and heard stories about how Jewish refugees were smuggled into Israel.
Kitsy did not belong to the group long, because it soon disbanded. Shortly before that happened, the group performed at a school assembly. During an intermission of the performance, Kitsy went into the room where the performers were changing costumes. Dina had removed her upper clothing and was bare-breasted briefly in the presence of a male performer who likewise was changing costumes. Kitsy's glimpse of Dina -- "thin and not pretty" with that male -- impressed Kitsy negatively. "Being Jewish was something ... sadly sexual".
Ten years later, in 1959, Kitsy remembered her brief involvement with the Young Zionist group as "the most Jewish thing she'd ever done".
======
It seems that Kitsy attended a women's college. She had applied to attend Vassar, a women's college, but she was not accepted there (she was put onto the waiting list) and so had to attend another college. Kitsy graduated in the spring of 1959. In the summer of 1959, Kitsy participates in a bus tour in Europe with some other graduates of women's colleges.
The tour was advertised as a "traveling seminar of ideas with statesmen and journalists in informal settings". The tour guide is "the elderly widow of the martyred publisher of a Danish resistance newspaper". The widow is conducting such a tour for the first time. The girls (Bergstein calls her young-women characters "girls", and so will I) travel about nine hours a day in a Volkswagen bus. Then in the evenings, after dinner, this guide engages the girls in conversations along the lines: "Shall we talk together of what we have seen this day. The people by the road, their faces were not happy ones, yes?"
The girls soon become dissatisfied that they were not experiencing a "traveling seminar of ideas".
The tour begins in Switzerland and proceeds through France and into Germany. Already in Switzerland, Kitsy becomes friends with another girl, Ila Rappaport. I assume that Ila had attended a different women's college than Kitsy attended. Since Ila too is Jewish, I assume also that the tour was organized specially for Jewish graduates of women's colleges.
======
Kitsy has pink cheeks and dark hair, which she wears in a pageboy with bangs and with a pink hairband. Her best dress on the tour was "a pale blue linen sack, hung straight and chaste from her neck except for the two sweet thumps of her breasts and buttocks". Kitsy is a "sturdy rounded lively girl".
Ila is taller and her hair is light-colored -- "silvery tan". She has Slavic cheekbones. She has "heavy breasts" and skinny legs that look "spectacular" in short skirts.
In encounters, men are attracted to Ila much more than than to Kitsy.
======
In Paris, the Kitsy and Ila go to a bookstore and buy two pornographic novels -- still illegal in the USA -- written by Henry Miller. Kitsy buys The Tropic of Cancer, and Ila buys The Tropic of Capricorn.
Kitsy intends to become a writer and spends much of her time during the tour writing her detailed observations in a notebook.
Ila says that she might want to become a writer too, but she shows no effort and does not know what she might write about. For now, she prefers to talk about learning to play the French horn.
======
Neither Kitsy nor Ila know of any relatives who suffered during the Nazi period in Europe. It seems that both their families have lived in America for generations and have become prosperous.
Ila is emotional -- sometimes bursting into tears -- about visiting Germany as a Jew, and Kitsy is relatively objective. Sometimes Kitsy even treats the experience as a lark.
While traveling in West Germany, Kitsy and Ila escape from the tour group and travel together to Berlin, which was located in the middle of East Germany. In West Berlin, Kitsy and Ila become acquainted with a couple of West German, who take them on a one-day excursion into East Berlin.
After the group returns to West Berlin, Ila goes alone with one of the men to his apartment, while Kitsy returns to her hotel room. Kitsy still is a virgin and is angry and that Ila has involved herself so quickly with this German man, who is 31 years old and who served in a Hitler Youth militia during the War.
In the German photographer's apartment, Ila undresses, gets into bed with him and (I assume) poses for nude photographs. She does not, however, engaged in vaginal intercourse with him. After her sexual adventure, Ila returns to Kitsy in the hotel room.
Kitsy and Ila buy tickets for an airplane flight out of the West Berlin airport. Because they dawdled at their hotel, though, they miss their flight. Ila calls the German photographer and goes back to his apartment for more naked fun with him. Meanwhile, Kitsy wanders in downtown Berlin. When she tries to call the German photographer, he does not answer her phone calls.
Eventually Kitsy and Ila fly out of West Berlin on another flight.
=======
In earlier articles in this blog, I have developed the idea that Baby Houseman suffers a manic-depressive disorder, Type 2. While reading Advancing Paul Newman, I already am developing the idea that the novel portrays such a disorder in the two leading characters.
=======
I will continue this series in Part 5.
=======
=======
I have studied the first four chapters of Eleanor Bergstein's novel Advancing Paul Newman. Before I continue into Chapter Five, I will recapitulate here what I have learned so far.
=======
Karen "Kitsy" Frank was born on January 20, 1938 -- in the same year when Bergstein was born.
Kitsy's father is a doctor, perhaps a psychiatrist. On one occasion, two Jewish young women in the neighborhood came to her father at home and asked him to commit their mother to a facility. He refused to do so, saying that he "didn't want the responsibility".
Kitsy's family is ethnically Jewish, but is not involved in religion. When Kitsy was 11 years old, she became involved briefly in a Young Zionist group, which was led by an Israeli female named Dina, who seems to be somewhat older. From Dina, Kitsy learned to dance the hora and heard stories about how Jewish refugees were smuggled into Israel.
Kitsy did not belong to the group long, because it soon disbanded. Shortly before that happened, the group performed at a school assembly. During an intermission of the performance, Kitsy went into the room where the performers were changing costumes. Dina had removed her upper clothing and was bare-breasted briefly in the presence of a male performer who likewise was changing costumes. Kitsy's glimpse of Dina -- "thin and not pretty" with that male -- impressed Kitsy negatively. "Being Jewish was something ... sadly sexual".
Ten years later, in 1959, Kitsy remembered her brief involvement with the Young Zionist group as "the most Jewish thing she'd ever done".
======
It seems that Kitsy attended a women's college. She had applied to attend Vassar, a women's college, but she was not accepted there (she was put onto the waiting list) and so had to attend another college. Kitsy graduated in the spring of 1959. In the summer of 1959, Kitsy participates in a bus tour in Europe with some other graduates of women's colleges.
The tour was advertised as a "traveling seminar of ideas with statesmen and journalists in informal settings". The tour guide is "the elderly widow of the martyred publisher of a Danish resistance newspaper". The widow is conducting such a tour for the first time. The girls (Bergstein calls her young-women characters "girls", and so will I) travel about nine hours a day in a Volkswagen bus. Then in the evenings, after dinner, this guide engages the girls in conversations along the lines: "Shall we talk together of what we have seen this day. The people by the road, their faces were not happy ones, yes?"
The girls soon become dissatisfied that they were not experiencing a "traveling seminar of ideas".
The tour begins in Switzerland and proceeds through France and into Germany. Already in Switzerland, Kitsy becomes friends with another girl, Ila Rappaport. I assume that Ila had attended a different women's college than Kitsy attended. Since Ila too is Jewish, I assume also that the tour was organized specially for Jewish graduates of women's colleges.
======
Kitsy has pink cheeks and dark hair, which she wears in a pageboy with bangs and with a pink hairband. Her best dress on the tour was "a pale blue linen sack, hung straight and chaste from her neck except for the two sweet thumps of her breasts and buttocks". Kitsy is a "sturdy rounded lively girl".
Ila is taller and her hair is light-colored -- "silvery tan". She has Slavic cheekbones. She has "heavy breasts" and skinny legs that look "spectacular" in short skirts.
In encounters, men are attracted to Ila much more than than to Kitsy.
======
In Paris, the Kitsy and Ila go to a bookstore and buy two pornographic novels -- still illegal in the USA -- written by Henry Miller. Kitsy buys The Tropic of Cancer, and Ila buys The Tropic of Capricorn.
Kitsy intends to become a writer and spends much of her time during the tour writing her detailed observations in a notebook.
Ila says that she might want to become a writer too, but she shows no effort and does not know what she might write about. For now, she prefers to talk about learning to play the French horn.
======
Neither Kitsy nor Ila know of any relatives who suffered during the Nazi period in Europe. It seems that both their families have lived in America for generations and have become prosperous.
Ila is emotional -- sometimes bursting into tears -- about visiting Germany as a Jew, and Kitsy is relatively objective. Sometimes Kitsy even treats the experience as a lark.
While traveling in West Germany, Kitsy and Ila escape from the tour group and travel together to Berlin, which was located in the middle of East Germany. In West Berlin, Kitsy and Ila become acquainted with a couple of West German, who take them on a one-day excursion into East Berlin.
After the group returns to West Berlin, Ila goes alone with one of the men to his apartment, while Kitsy returns to her hotel room. Kitsy still is a virgin and is angry and that Ila has involved herself so quickly with this German man, who is 31 years old and who served in a Hitler Youth militia during the War.
In the German photographer's apartment, Ila undresses, gets into bed with him and (I assume) poses for nude photographs. She does not, however, engaged in vaginal intercourse with him. After her sexual adventure, Ila returns to Kitsy in the hotel room.
Kitsy and Ila buy tickets for an airplane flight out of the West Berlin airport. Because they dawdled at their hotel, though, they miss their flight. Ila calls the German photographer and goes back to his apartment for more naked fun with him. Meanwhile, Kitsy wanders in downtown Berlin. When she tries to call the German photographer, he does not answer her phone calls.
Eventually Kitsy and Ila fly out of West Berlin on another flight.
=======
In earlier articles in this blog, I have developed the idea that Baby Houseman suffers a manic-depressive disorder, Type 2. While reading Advancing Paul Newman, I already am developing the idea that the novel portrays such a disorder in the two leading characters.
* Kitsy is a character in a normal emotional state.At the end of Chapter One, Bergstein states her theme explicitly:
* Ila is a character alternating between depressive and manic states.
This is the story of two girls, each of whom suspected the other of a more passionate connection with life.Kitsy lives her life in self-disciplined, objective manner -- practicing her writing skills with a goal of becoming a professional writer. Ila bursts into tears at the thought of being a Jew visiting Germany, but then she impulsively gets naked and into bed with a 31-year-old German man. Which girl has the "more passionate connection with life"?
=======
I will continue this series in Part 5.
=======
Saturday, September 7, 2019
Advancing Paul Newman -- Part 3
Part 1 and Part 2
Much of Eleanor Bergstein's novel Advancing Paul Newman is difficult to read. For example, in Chapter One, Ila, Kitsy and Jerry are walking from a meeting to the hotel where Ila and Kitsy will spend the night. On the way, the three stop at a luncheonette. They are joined by two law students -- one white and one black. The reader cannot understand the following three paragraphs:
Not all of the novel is such gibberish, but many passages are.
-----
Many pronouns are puzzling. For example, a paragraph that begins with an interaction between Ila and Kitsy. Then in the second sentence there will be the pronoun she, which might refer to either Ila or Kitsy. The reader has to study the entire paragraph carefully and even repeatedly to figure out who that she is.
Such pronoun confusion is too frequent -- maybe about once a page. It happens with she, her, he, his, it and its.
There are many run-on sentences lacking punctuation and capitalization. Examples:
-----
In Chapter One, Ila has arrived at a meeting and sees Kitsy on the floor.
Did Bergstein mislead her readers about the dead soldier's widow on purpose?
In Chapter Two, the narrator mentions that Kitsy used to be married, long ago, to Jerry. The reader knows that Jerry is still alive. Did Kitsy marry and divorce Jerry and then marry some other man who was killed in Vietnam?
In Chapter Three, however, the reader learns that the meeting chairman's (not Kitsy's) husband was killed in Vietnam.
Didn't Viking Press assign an editor to this novel before its publication?
======
I am reading this novel for the first time and am summarizing it as I go. I am not speed-reading it. I am reading a section and then writing a summary of that section.
After I read and summarized the novel's first two chapters, I had to go back to the beginning and reread it even more carefully and try to solve all the gratuitous puzzles. Who is she? What is it? What is an E.D. breakdown? How many times has Kitsy been married? And so forth and so on.
======
Now I have read the first four chapters, twice.
The novel continues to switch back-and-forth between two time periods and will continue to do so until the novel's end (I peeked into Chapter Forty-Five.)
In my Part 4 of my blog series, I will summarize what I have deduced so far about the young years of Karen "Kitsy" Frank (i.e. Eleanor "Baby" Houseman).
======
Much of Eleanor Bergstein's novel Advancing Paul Newman is difficult to read. For example, in Chapter One, Ila, Kitsy and Jerry are walking from a meeting to the hotel where Ila and Kitsy will spend the night. On the way, the three stop at a luncheonette. They are joined by two law students -- one white and one black. The reader cannot understand the following three paragraphs:
The black student began to talk about Howard somebody that crock of shit who sat with his feet in his desk drawer in Kirkwood talking on the phone and giving money to Big Flip who rode around with him in an open car saying “which side of the black face you want to see man” making him feel terrific while Carver and his boys who ran the whole North End couldn’t even get in to see him though they’d offered to let the Senator come to their clubhouse to answer questions.Yes, the last paragraph does begin with that one long word.
“Hey you may not realize it” said Ila, “but you better get a press release out right away to the mass media explaining that none of it’s been the Senator’s fault the papers are full of stories about NAACP meetings being canceled.”
“listenabigailwaswithcorettathewholeweekforgettheprivateplanejazz” someone said wearily, as they all stood up and went to the modern hotel ...
Not all of the novel is such gibberish, but many passages are.
-----
Many pronouns are puzzling. For example, a paragraph that begins with an interaction between Ila and Kitsy. Then in the second sentence there will be the pronoun she, which might refer to either Ila or Kitsy. The reader has to study the entire paragraph carefully and even repeatedly to figure out who that she is.
Such pronoun confusion is too frequent -- maybe about once a page. It happens with she, her, he, his, it and its.
There are many run-on sentences lacking punctuation and capitalization. Examples:
The housing girl's a nut you'll stay with me we have our own bathroomWhen Ila writes on a typewriter, she blathers with many typos and faulty punctuation.
what do you mean you don't know why how can you not know why did you have anybody in the war did any family go to concentration camps?
I had a buddy in the army was a painter stationed in Germany you knew was married to a countess he met her in a bar at seven in the morning they got married two days later. He lived in New York too you know only I never knew him, he used to say above Fourteenth Street's a different city now he's married in Massachusetts, nice girl from Massachusetts they have a little handicraft shop you know souvenirs maple syrup little carving he paints in the back, so we're in the army and she says 'my wife I'm meeting her at the train I haven't seen her for two years, you want to come at nine in the morning.'
I have always been prkne to vjolent floodingI am guessing that Bergstein was strongly influenced as a writer by James Joyce.
I have always been prone to violent floodings of response that knok me off my feet, take me out of my mind ... out of all congrol. And ride with them.. the rest of my life is a training period so that when they come I am in enough control so that I can summon up all the extraordinarily disciplined other corners of my life and say to myself bear with me I know what I'm doing. otherwise to put logic and reason on the surge of feeling is impossible -- there's no reason to feel like thisyou did the right thing -- lists of reasons -- they don't count at all they make no difference and I don't approve of them either. I am not one for little jolts of feeling I am here and they are there. I remember riding on a hot Sunday on the train up to a country home.. I had a straw bad from Italy which had almost worn out mak ig my life cohesive.. my friend was brave and talented .. the other people around us less impressive.. and he said look at tht man in that window tithe a bottle and we were passing a row of tenament houses and my friend had always been afraid he would end up alone in a dingy room with a bottle ... and I coolly said .... yes the curtains are flapping outside like tongues.. and they were.. and I did not imagine myself in that bulding and feel a want of sympathy I can cover myself .. but otherwise I don't care at all ... and I do not feel a wash of sympathy.
-----
In Chapter One, Ila has arrived at a meeting and sees Kitsy on the floor.
And there in the middle of the people on the floor lay Kitsy, crying and twitching and moaning, her arms and legs jerking, mumbling "work to do … up ..." Jerry was kneeling beside her.Most readers would think that Kitsy's husband was killed in Vietnam a few months ago. However, in Chapter Three, the reader learns that the husband of the meeting's chairman -- not the husband of Kitsy -- was killed in Vietnam.
" ... that’s gonna be me tomorrow I swear to God if someone doesn’t get me those E.D. breakdowns from Roseburg” said someone in the crowd and someone else said
" …. her husband … killed in Vietnam a few months ago. ..."
Did Bergstein mislead her readers about the dead soldier's widow on purpose?
In Chapter Two, the narrator mentions that Kitsy used to be married, long ago, to Jerry. The reader knows that Jerry is still alive. Did Kitsy marry and divorce Jerry and then marry some other man who was killed in Vietnam?
In Chapter Three, however, the reader learns that the meeting chairman's (not Kitsy's) husband was killed in Vietnam.
Didn't Viking Press assign an editor to this novel before its publication?
======
I am reading this novel for the first time and am summarizing it as I go. I am not speed-reading it. I am reading a section and then writing a summary of that section.
After I read and summarized the novel's first two chapters, I had to go back to the beginning and reread it even more carefully and try to solve all the gratuitous puzzles. Who is she? What is it? What is an E.D. breakdown? How many times has Kitsy been married? And so forth and so on.
======
Now I have read the first four chapters, twice.
The novel continues to switch back-and-forth between two time periods and will continue to do so until the novel's end (I peeked into Chapter Forty-Five.)
In my Part 4 of my blog series, I will summarize what I have deduced so far about the young years of Karen "Kitsy" Frank (i.e. Eleanor "Baby" Houseman).
======
Thursday, September 5, 2019
Advancing Paul Newman -- Part 2
Part 1
I am summarizing and discussing Eleanor Bergstein's 1973 novel Advancing Paul Newman, which still can be purchased through Amazon. The novel's length is 373 pages, of which 19 pages were covered in my Part 1.
Bergstein was born in 1938. In the novel's first two chapters, the story switches back and forth between the years 1959 and 1968 -- years when Bergstein was 21 and 30 years old.
The novel contrasts the two main characters -- Ila Rappaport and Karen "Kitsy" Frank -- who seem to be about the same age. Kitsy surely is based on Bergstein.
The novel's theme is stated explicitly at the end of its Chapter 1.
The novel was published in 1973, when Bergstein was about 35 years old. Perhaps the novel continues into the 1970s, when Kitsy was in her early 30s.
======
I am reading Bergstein's novel in order to find insights about Baby Houseman, who proceeded through the following ages:
======
Consider three personas.
======
======
I myself was born in November 1952. I was ten years old in August 1963, when the Dirty Dancing story takes place.
During the years 1959-1968, I lived in Seward, Nebraska, -- the town's population was about 2,500 -- where my father taught at Concordia College, a Lutheran college. During those years, I attended a Lutheran elementary school and a Lutheran high school that were closely associated with the college. My family lived across the street from the campus. I tell about those years of my life in another blog, Seward Concordia Neighborhood.
Although I was only ten years old in 1963, I was involved already with the Concordia high-school students and college students. I observed their clothing, music, activities and attitudes. They were quite religious, but all of American culture was much more religious in 1963 than it is now in 2019.
In 1968, my Dad was hired by the University of Oregon, and so my family moved to Eugene, Oregon. We moved during the summer between my sophomore and junior years of high school, when I was 15 years old.
My resettling in Eugene, Oregon, in 1968 was a culture shock for me. Before then, my entire education had been in Lutheran schools. My sophomore class in Seward had about 25 students. My junior class in Eugene had about 250 students. On my first high-school day in Eugene, I was amazed to see my fellow students wearing jeans and tennis shoes -- gross violations of the dress code at Concordia High School.
I soon found myself arguing about religion -- in particular about abortion -- with other students.
-----
I was very interested in the 1968 Presidential election. I liked Senator Eugene McCarthy. He had grown up attending Catholic parochial schools and even prepared to become a monk. I loved his self-assurance, demeanor and wit.
During the primary elections, the Democrats' two main contenders were Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy. I favored McCarthy. After Kennedy was assassinated in June 1968, Hubert Humphrey entered the race against McCarthy.
I watched much of the Democrat Party's Convention on television during August 26-29. The convention ended in a riot between Chicago's police and anti-war demonstrators. A few days later, I began attending my new high school, and my speech-class teacher got all the students in the class arguing about that riot and about the Vietnam War.
Some of my fellow high-school students took me to a coffeehouse in downtown Eugene, where people the customers were dressed like hippies and sang songs at the open-mic. I spent many evenings there. There was incense and marijuana smoke in the air.
I read about the Vietnam War and decided that I opposed the US involvement. I participated in demonstrations against the Vietnam War. I wrote a leaflet opposing the war, paid for 1,000 photocopies of my leaflet, and rode a bus by myself to Portland, Oregon, and distributed my leaflets at an American Legion convention in 1969.
That is my own experience during the years 1963-1968 as I am reading Bergstein's novel based on her own participation in McCarthy's election campaign in 1968.
======
Continued in Part 3
======
I am summarizing and discussing Eleanor Bergstein's 1973 novel Advancing Paul Newman, which still can be purchased through Amazon. The novel's length is 373 pages, of which 19 pages were covered in my Part 1.
Bergstein was born in 1938. In the novel's first two chapters, the story switches back and forth between the years 1959 and 1968 -- years when Bergstein was 21 and 30 years old.
The novel contrasts the two main characters -- Ila Rappaport and Karen "Kitsy" Frank -- who seem to be about the same age. Kitsy surely is based on Bergstein.
The novel's theme is stated explicitly at the end of its Chapter 1.
This is the story of two girls, each of whom suspected the other of a more passionate connection with life.These two girls -- Bergstein calls them girls, and so will I -- will compare themselves with each other during the years 1959-1968, when they mature in age from 21 to 30.
The novel was published in 1973, when Bergstein was about 35 years old. Perhaps the novel continues into the 1970s, when Kitsy was in her early 30s.
======
I am reading Bergstein's novel in order to find insights about Baby Houseman, who proceeded through the following ages:
Born in about 1946One of the first articles in this blog was titled Disconnected Women - Penny Johnson, Vivian Pressman and Marjorie Houseman. There I pointed out that in the movie Dirty Dancing those three characters might be based variously on Bergstein herself.
17 years old in 1963
21 years old in 1967
22 years old in 1968
The movie's story takes place in 1963, when Bergstein was about 25 years old (Penny's age?)Of course, the character Baby is based on Eleanor. The Bergstein family -- a doctor father, a housewife mother, and two daughters -- spent summer vacations in Catstills resorts when Eleanor was young. Eleanor was 17 years old in 1955 -- about eight years before the Dirty Dancing story.
Bergstein began writing the screenplay in about 1985, when she was about 47 years old (Vivian's and Marjorie's ages?).
======
Consider three personas.
Eleanor BergsteinThey are not identical, but they must share similarities -- in various experiences, concerns, attitudes and family relationships. I am developing my own insights about Baby.
Kitsy Frank
Baby Houseman
======
 |
| Front cover (click on the image to enlarge it) |
 |
| Back cover (click on the image to enlarge it) |
I myself was born in November 1952. I was ten years old in August 1963, when the Dirty Dancing story takes place.
During the years 1959-1968, I lived in Seward, Nebraska, -- the town's population was about 2,500 -- where my father taught at Concordia College, a Lutheran college. During those years, I attended a Lutheran elementary school and a Lutheran high school that were closely associated with the college. My family lived across the street from the campus. I tell about those years of my life in another blog, Seward Concordia Neighborhood.
Although I was only ten years old in 1963, I was involved already with the Concordia high-school students and college students. I observed their clothing, music, activities and attitudes. They were quite religious, but all of American culture was much more religious in 1963 than it is now in 2019.
In 1968, my Dad was hired by the University of Oregon, and so my family moved to Eugene, Oregon. We moved during the summer between my sophomore and junior years of high school, when I was 15 years old.
My resettling in Eugene, Oregon, in 1968 was a culture shock for me. Before then, my entire education had been in Lutheran schools. My sophomore class in Seward had about 25 students. My junior class in Eugene had about 250 students. On my first high-school day in Eugene, I was amazed to see my fellow students wearing jeans and tennis shoes -- gross violations of the dress code at Concordia High School.
I soon found myself arguing about religion -- in particular about abortion -- with other students.
-----
I was very interested in the 1968 Presidential election. I liked Senator Eugene McCarthy. He had grown up attending Catholic parochial schools and even prepared to become a monk. I loved his self-assurance, demeanor and wit.
During the primary elections, the Democrats' two main contenders were Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy. I favored McCarthy. After Kennedy was assassinated in June 1968, Hubert Humphrey entered the race against McCarthy.
I watched much of the Democrat Party's Convention on television during August 26-29. The convention ended in a riot between Chicago's police and anti-war demonstrators. A few days later, I began attending my new high school, and my speech-class teacher got all the students in the class arguing about that riot and about the Vietnam War.
Some of my fellow high-school students took me to a coffeehouse in downtown Eugene, where people the customers were dressed like hippies and sang songs at the open-mic. I spent many evenings there. There was incense and marijuana smoke in the air.
I read about the Vietnam War and decided that I opposed the US involvement. I participated in demonstrations against the Vietnam War. I wrote a leaflet opposing the war, paid for 1,000 photocopies of my leaflet, and rode a bus by myself to Portland, Oregon, and distributed my leaflets at an American Legion convention in 1969.
That is my own experience during the years 1963-1968 as I am reading Bergstein's novel based on her own participation in McCarthy's election campaign in 1968.
======
Continued in Part 3
======
Monday, September 2, 2019
Advancing Paul Newman -- Part 1
Eleanor Bergstein's novel Advancing Paul Newman was published in 1973, when she was about 35 years old. The novel was read and liked by Claudia Weill, an aspiring movie director. Weill asked Bergstein to write a screenplay, which became the 1980 movie It's My Turn. Thus the novel led to Bergstein's screenwriter career.
I have not read this book until now. I will read the book and summarize it in a series of posts.
======
The novel's preface:
If you were in a bookstore and picked up this book and looked at its cover and then read this preface, would you buy the book? Claudia Will did!
======
The preface introduces three characters (not counting the cat):
Ila had this horrible dream and woke up because she perceived that Kitsy felt pain about the young man. Two possibilities:
Chapter One
The third-person narrator informs the reader:
Ila Rappaport is a woman in love with a psychiatrist turned orthopedist, who is "strong but not insensitive". She is a very talented writer who has written a story that was published in The New Yorker magazine, but now she is suffering from writer's block.
She has heavy breasts and skinny legs that look spectacular in short skirts.
She is flying on a passenger airliner and reading leftist materials (for example, Howard Zinn's Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal). She was able to buy the flight ticket because she had collected donations from other people.
When Ila gets out of the airplane, she realizes that Richard Nixon had been a fellow passenger.
Ila rides in a taxi in darkness. On the way, she sees some banners against the Vietnam War. One banner favors anti-war candidate Senator Gene McCarthy in the 1968 Presidential election.
The taxi delivers Ila to her destination. She climbs the stairs to a fourth-story apartment. Inside, some people are lying on the floor. Among them is Kitsy ...
Ila kneels and puts Kitsy's head on her knees and uses the damp cloth to sponge Kitsy's forehead and cheeks.
Chapter Two
The narrator returns in time to 1959.
Karen "Kitsy" Frank has just graduated from college and is vacationing in the French Alps. She is riding a tour bus. In the seat behind her, another girl (the narrator regularly uses the word girl) complains to Kitsy that she is suffering from a cold and that Kitsy has opened her bus window.
The two girls -- Kitsy and Ila -- become friends on the bus. They discuss European philosophers. On the bus tour, the two girls find themselves taking care of an elderly woman, Mrs. Jorganssen, the widow of the martyred publisher of a Danish resistance newspaper.
In Paris, the two girls go to a bookstore to buy two pornographic novels written by Henry Miller (illegal to buy in the USA). Because of this bookstore visit, they almost miss their departing train.
-----
The narrator returns to 1968, where Ila is sponging Kitsy's forehead and cheeks.
Ila, Kitsy and Jerry leave the fourth-story apartment and walk to the hotel room where Ila is staying. Jerry is a poet who will perform a poetry reading in the morning.
On the way to the hotel, the three stop at a luncheonnette to eat waffles. They are joined by two male acquaintances -- law students -- one black and one white. Ila tells the others about being with Richard Nixon on her airliner. Their subsequent conversation is incoherent for the reader. They mention having to write a press release about "the Senator".
Ila and Kitsy leave the luncheonnette and arrive at the hotel. There they are informed that they will share a room with three other girls -- Alice, Susan and Dorothy.
-----
The narrator returns in time to 1959. [Bergstein was about 21 years old in 1959.]
Ila and Kitsy are sharing a compartment in an overnight train from Paris. In the upper berth, Ila begins to cry. Kitsy climbs up to the upper berth and joins Ila. It seems to Kitsy that Ila began crying because the train had crossed the France-Germany border, where Ila saw a German train conductor for the first time.
Ila and Kitsy talk about their both being Jewish and about the Nazi period.
-----
The narrator returns to 1968.
Across the street from the hotel there is a movie theater showing the movie In Cold Blood. The movie ends, and the crowd comes out onto the street, where some of the boys joke about mass-murdering the girls.
Kitsy remarks that she suffers from bad dreams. If she seems to be having a nightmare, she remarks, then the other girls in the hotel room should wake her up. Then Kitsy falls asleep.
-----
The narrator returns to 1959.
Ila and Kitsy are on a beach at Bad Godesberg, Germany. Kitsy is writing about Paris in her notebook.
Kitsy remembers a crazy old Jewish woman who lived in her childhood neighborhood. The old woman had fled from Germany to the USA. The old woman's two adult daughters asked Kitsy's father to commit their mother to an insane asylum. Kitsy's father (a psychiatrist?) declined to involve himself in that family's problems.
-----
The narrator returns to 1968.
Jerry comes from his poetry reading to the girls' hotel room. The poetry reading was in a nursing home. The old people there were incoherent. During his poetry reading, some girls who were McCarthy supporters tried to convince the old people to support McCarthy. The old people did not understand the poetry or the politics.
As Jerry tells the girls about his poetry reading, the narrator mentions that Jerry and Kitsy had been married "a long time ago".
-----
The narrator returns to 1959.
The tour group is in a hotel restaurant. An American journalist is lecturing about Germany. He is asked about ex-Nazis in the West German government. He says there are some.
The tour group will travel into Berlin, which is inside East Germany.
Music plays in the restaurant. Ila gets up and dances. Kitsy admires Ila's dancing.
-----
The narrator returns to 1968.
Kitsy is sitting in a political-campaign office, preparing to mail invitations to a fund-raising party. She throws a temper-tantrum because a young man there left a half-eaten apple on her desk. The apple juice and his spit had spoiled some of the invitations.
-----
The narrator returns to 1959.
The group's tour bus enters Berlin. That evening "Eric the photographer" (apparently a German) takes Ila and Kitsy to a party. There, he invites Ila to come with him to his apartment. Kitsy goes back to the hotel, and Ila goes to Eric's apartment.
In their hotel room, Kitsy washes her own clothes and then washes Ila's clothes.
Ila comes back to the hotel room and tells Kitsy: "When I was frightened he was very gentle."
The narrator returns to 1968.
Kitsy and Ila leave the political-campaign office in order to distribute some political flyers. The apple guy -- the former student of Louis -- drives them to a supermarket.
While handing out fliers, Kitsy and Ila chat. Ila tells about a dinner date, in her past, with a guy named Stephen. Kitsy asks whether Stephen was Ila's boyfriend "after Loren and before Warren". Kitsy says she dropped Stephen after just one date because he learned that he made model bridges out of toothpicks.
It turns out that Jerry too is handing out flyers at the supermarket.
Also, the apple guy -- the former student of Louis -- is standing by the supermarket's exit ramp, watching people coming out with full shopping carts.
The narrator returns to 1959.
Eric takes Ila and Kitsy into East Berlin. They are accompanied by another German man, Claus Pieter.
East Berlin policemen stop the four-person group repeatedly, especially questioning the two American girls and checking their documents. Kitsy is exhilarated by the German policemen's attention, but Ila weeps in fright.
-----
The narrator returns to 1968.
Ila, Kitsy and Jerry continue to hand out political flyers at the supermarket. Many of people respond negatively to the flyers.
It turns out that the flyers are advertising a visit by the actor Paul Newman at the supermarket on the following Thursday. Newman will speak in support of Senator McCarthy's election campaign.
-----
The narrator returns to 1959.
Ila and Kitsy are late to their airplane flight out of Berlin. Eric comes to the airport and takes Ila to his apartment. Kitsy goes shopping in Berlin. Kitsy tries to phone Eric's apartment, but some problem prevents a connection.
Kitsy thinks that her being lost is bad, but it's not as bad as it would be "to lie inside four walls and have sexual intercourse with an ex-Nazi storm trooper."
It turns out that Ila had told Kitsy that Eric the photographer had belonged to the Hitler Youth when he was 19 years old.
-----
The narrator returns to 1968.
Still handing out flyers at the supermarket, Ila and Kitsy talk about the fact that many women shoppers are wearing hair rollers so that they will look lovely for their husbands later that evening.
-----
The narrator returns to 1959.
Kitsy tells Ila that she wants to keep trying to become a professional writer.
Ila responds that she might want to become a writer in the future, but she still did not know what she might want to write. In the meantime, Ila wants to learn how to play the French horn.
Kitsy writes in her diary:
To be continued in Part 2.
======
 |
| Hardback Cover of Advancing Paul Newman by Eleanor Bergstein (click image to enlarge it) |
The novel's preface:
Ila dreamed Kitsy's young man sliced a cat at the lunch table and blood spurted all over. The slices were neat like filet de boeuf only the red center was liquid blood and it spurted all over. Ila jumped up making a scene -- making Kisty upset. Ila blamed herself -- for she knew Kitsy had wanted her to think well of the young man -- and she blamed herself for not having sat pleasantly at the big wooden sunny table for lunch saying oh what an interesting thing to do. When she woke up, she thought she had dreamed of Kitsy's pain.This novel is 373 pages long.
If you were in a bookstore and picked up this book and looked at its cover and then read this preface, would you buy the book? Claudia Will did!
======
The preface introduces three characters (not counting the cat):
1) Ila (Rappaport)Ila is dreaming so horribly about Kitsy's young man that Ila jumps up, which upsets Kitsy. It seems that Kitsy had introduced the young man to Ila at lunch. Apparently, Ila only pretended to like Kity's young man at the lunch.
2) Kitsy (Frank)
3) Kitsy's young man
Ila had this horrible dream and woke up because she perceived that Kitsy felt pain about the young man. Two possibilities:
1) Kitsy felt embarrassed that he was her young man=====
2) Kitsy was hurt that Ila did not like her young man.
Chapter One
The third-person narrator informs the reader:
Ila Rappaport is a woman in love with a psychiatrist turned orthopedist, who is "strong but not insensitive". She is a very talented writer who has written a story that was published in The New Yorker magazine, but now she is suffering from writer's block.
She has heavy breasts and skinny legs that look spectacular in short skirts.
She is flying on a passenger airliner and reading leftist materials (for example, Howard Zinn's Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal). She was able to buy the flight ticket because she had collected donations from other people.
When Ila gets out of the airplane, she realizes that Richard Nixon had been a fellow passenger.
Ila rides in a taxi in darkness. On the way, she sees some banners against the Vietnam War. One banner favors anti-war candidate Senator Gene McCarthy in the 1968 Presidential election.
The taxi delivers Ila to her destination. She climbs the stairs to a fourth-story apartment. Inside, some people are lying on the floor. Among them is Kitsy ...
.... crying and twitching and moaning, her arms and legs jerking, mumbling "work to do ... up ..."Someone explains:
... her husband ... killed in Vietnam a few months ago.In the room there's a guy named Jerry Palumbo. He gives Ila a damp cloth and motions her to approach Kitsy. As Kitsy murmurs and moans, Jerry remarks: "Kitsy always said she'd end up on a lunatic fringe".
Ila kneels and puts Kitsy's head on her knees and uses the damp cloth to sponge Kitsy's forehead and cheeks.
This is the story of two girls, each of whom suspected the other of a more passionate connection to life.======
Chapter Two
The narrator returns in time to 1959.
Karen "Kitsy" Frank has just graduated from college and is vacationing in the French Alps. She is riding a tour bus. In the seat behind her, another girl (the narrator regularly uses the word girl) complains to Kitsy that she is suffering from a cold and that Kitsy has opened her bus window.
The two girls -- Kitsy and Ila -- become friends on the bus. They discuss European philosophers. On the bus tour, the two girls find themselves taking care of an elderly woman, Mrs. Jorganssen, the widow of the martyred publisher of a Danish resistance newspaper.
In Paris, the two girls go to a bookstore to buy two pornographic novels written by Henry Miller (illegal to buy in the USA). Because of this bookstore visit, they almost miss their departing train.
-----
The narrator returns to 1968, where Ila is sponging Kitsy's forehead and cheeks.
Ila, Kitsy and Jerry leave the fourth-story apartment and walk to the hotel room where Ila is staying. Jerry is a poet who will perform a poetry reading in the morning.
On the way to the hotel, the three stop at a luncheonnette to eat waffles. They are joined by two male acquaintances -- law students -- one black and one white. Ila tells the others about being with Richard Nixon on her airliner. Their subsequent conversation is incoherent for the reader. They mention having to write a press release about "the Senator".
Ila and Kitsy leave the luncheonnette and arrive at the hotel. There they are informed that they will share a room with three other girls -- Alice, Susan and Dorothy.
-----
The narrator returns in time to 1959. [Bergstein was about 21 years old in 1959.]
Ila and Kitsy are sharing a compartment in an overnight train from Paris. In the upper berth, Ila begins to cry. Kitsy climbs up to the upper berth and joins Ila. It seems to Kitsy that Ila began crying because the train had crossed the France-Germany border, where Ila saw a German train conductor for the first time.
Ila and Kitsy talk about their both being Jewish and about the Nazi period.
-----
The narrator returns to 1968.
Across the street from the hotel there is a movie theater showing the movie In Cold Blood. The movie ends, and the crowd comes out onto the street, where some of the boys joke about mass-murdering the girls.
Kitsy remarks that she suffers from bad dreams. If she seems to be having a nightmare, she remarks, then the other girls in the hotel room should wake her up. Then Kitsy falls asleep.
Ila was on a different time schedule. She lay awake remembering when she heard about Louis and gone running to see Kitsy, and Kitsy had come to the door of her room naked but with no nipples or pubic hair and Ila had thought that grief had turned her pale -- made her neuter -- but it was an opaque body stocking.That paragraph makes no sense to the reader. Louis had not been mentioned previously in the novel.
-----
The narrator returns to 1959.
Ila and Kitsy are on a beach at Bad Godesberg, Germany. Kitsy is writing about Paris in her notebook.
Kitsy remembers a crazy old Jewish woman who lived in her childhood neighborhood. The old woman had fled from Germany to the USA. The old woman's two adult daughters asked Kitsy's father to commit their mother to an insane asylum. Kitsy's father (a psychiatrist?) declined to involve himself in that family's problems.
-----
The narrator returns to 1968.
Jerry comes from his poetry reading to the girls' hotel room. The poetry reading was in a nursing home. The old people there were incoherent. During his poetry reading, some girls who were McCarthy supporters tried to convince the old people to support McCarthy. The old people did not understand the poetry or the politics.
As Jerry tells the girls about his poetry reading, the narrator mentions that Jerry and Kitsy had been married "a long time ago".
-----
The narrator returns to 1959.
The tour group is in a hotel restaurant. An American journalist is lecturing about Germany. He is asked about ex-Nazis in the West German government. He says there are some.
The tour group will travel into Berlin, which is inside East Germany.
Music plays in the restaurant. Ila gets up and dances. Kitsy admires Ila's dancing.
-----
The narrator returns to 1968.
Kitsy is sitting in a political-campaign office, preparing to mail invitations to a fund-raising party. She throws a temper-tantrum because a young man there left a half-eaten apple on her desk. The apple juice and his spit had spoiled some of the invitations.
It turned out that the young man was a former student of Louis's.The reader still does not know who Louis is.
-----
The narrator returns to 1959.
The group's tour bus enters Berlin. That evening "Eric the photographer" (apparently a German) takes Ila and Kitsy to a party. There, he invites Ila to come with him to his apartment. Kitsy goes back to the hotel, and Ila goes to Eric's apartment.
In their hotel room, Kitsy washes her own clothes and then washes Ila's clothes.
Ila comes back to the hotel room and tells Kitsy: "When I was frightened he was very gentle."
Kitsy felt like a dirty-minded virgin, was very angry at everyone, and wondered how she could not have realized before that Ila tan, flat, slightly runny nose ... had turned into a golden beauty.-----
The narrator returns to 1968.
Kitsy and Ila leave the political-campaign office in order to distribute some political flyers. The apple guy -- the former student of Louis -- drives them to a supermarket.
While handing out fliers, Kitsy and Ila chat. Ila tells about a dinner date, in her past, with a guy named Stephen. Kitsy asks whether Stephen was Ila's boyfriend "after Loren and before Warren". Kitsy says she dropped Stephen after just one date because he learned that he made model bridges out of toothpicks.
It turns out that Jerry too is handing out flyers at the supermarket.
Also, the apple guy -- the former student of Louis -- is standing by the supermarket's exit ramp, watching people coming out with full shopping carts.
The sun glinted on his hair, and for a moment the ramp seemed electrified, so full of pleasure and sun was he .... Altogether it was that he was alive and Louis wasn't.-----
The narrator returns to 1959.
Eric takes Ila and Kitsy into East Berlin. They are accompanied by another German man, Claus Pieter.
East Berlin policemen stop the four-person group repeatedly, especially questioning the two American girls and checking their documents. Kitsy is exhilarated by the German policemen's attention, but Ila weeps in fright.
-----
The narrator returns to 1968.
Ila, Kitsy and Jerry continue to hand out political flyers at the supermarket. Many of people respond negatively to the flyers.
It turns out that the flyers are advertising a visit by the actor Paul Newman at the supermarket on the following Thursday. Newman will speak in support of Senator McCarthy's election campaign.
-----
The narrator returns to 1959.
Ila and Kitsy are late to their airplane flight out of Berlin. Eric comes to the airport and takes Ila to his apartment. Kitsy goes shopping in Berlin. Kitsy tries to phone Eric's apartment, but some problem prevents a connection.
Kitsy thinks that her being lost is bad, but it's not as bad as it would be "to lie inside four walls and have sexual intercourse with an ex-Nazi storm trooper."
It turns out that Ila had told Kitsy that Eric the photographer had belonged to the Hitler Youth when he was 19 years old.
-----
The narrator returns to 1968.
Still handing out flyers at the supermarket, Ila and Kitsy talk about the fact that many women shoppers are wearing hair rollers so that they will look lovely for their husbands later that evening.
-----
The narrator returns to 1959.
Kitsy tells Ila that she wants to keep trying to become a professional writer.
Ila responds that she might want to become a writer in the future, but she still did not know what she might want to write. In the meantime, Ila wants to learn how to play the French horn.
Kitsy writes in her diary:
So the lines are drawn. I'm the dirty-minded little virgin and she's the one who really lives.======
To be continued in Part 2.
======
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