Just a note

[pameladean]

I'm having a lot of difficulty with Live Journal at the moment. I'll get "Connection closed by remote server" two or three times and then often a failure to achieve a data lock, or something like that. With a journal entry I will persevere, but sometimes with a comment I won't. I'm hoping it will clear up soon. In the meantime, I will discourse briefly on A ROOM MADE Of WINDOWS. It was only the second book I had encountered about a young girl who wanted to be a writer, and who in fact was writing. The first, of course, was LITTLE WOMEN. I got to Alcott so young, I am not sure if Jo really was like me or if I, being malleable, made myself as like her as I could. Julia, in ROOM, is not like me, except in the furious determination of writing. I loved that book passionately and still reread it with immense attention, interest, and discovery.

Pamela

Comments

[marykaykare.livejournal.com]

I first read Little Women at about the age of 6. For many many years I was a devoted Alcott fan. I especially liked EIGHT COUSINS and ROSE IN BLOOM, but I read lots of them over and over and over. I was surprised some years ago to pick up LITTLE WOMEN and discover how revoltingly saccharine and sanctimonious it was. I don't remember it hat way at all. I don't dare re-read EIGHT COUSINS...

MKK

[pameladean]

I had the same experience, but luckily I was reading a lot of other literature of the period at the time, so I got to calibrate the parts I didn't like and just accept them as one accepts other features of past literature. My recollection is that EIGHT COUSINS is far brisker than LITTLE WOMEN, verging almost on the parodic from time to time, so it might not take you so much aback. Be wary of ROSE IN BLOOM, though. It's very sentimental.

I was five when I started Alcott. My mother gave me her whole set, covered in blue. She was missing LITTLE MEN, which I did not read until I was in my twenties. I did read JO'S BOYS, and that was weird but understandable without the preceding book.

Pamela

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I was called after Jo in Little Women and so it's only right that I grew up just like her.

I wonder how many people there are who are like her, and how one could find more of them?

[pameladean]

I would imagine there are a lot of us. Jo's Girls, we might call ourselves. I wish she'd had some.

I suspect Carolyn Heilbrun of being one of us.

Pamela

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

Oh my God. Do you mean that book by, I think, Eleanor Cameron, where the heroine is trying to find out what a "harpet" is and her brother is bugging her? Because, if so, you're the only other person I've encountered who's read that book. It is lovely.

I remember reading "Little Women" at a really ridiculous age -- eight or so -- and not getting lots of it, but I did wonder as I got older whether or not my "fits" of writing ("Does genius burn, Jo?") were sort of copied from her or if the picture of her in my head gave me internal permission to bring out a natural part of myself.

"Jo's Girls" -- what an excellent concept! (And I remember just feeling betrayed when Professor Bhaer didn't like her stories. I wanted to poison him.)

Excuse me for commenting without knowing you personally -- I don't mean to intrude, I was just so shocked by that "Room" reference.