Reading the Classics discussion

Discuss part three of I Capture the Castle.

Unfortunately my copy hasn't arrived yet. It may be next week. Looking forward to reading it.

Just found the University of Iowa library copy of the original 1949 edition & read the 1st chap. Very arch narrator.

Finished I Capture the Castle with about 8 hours to spare before the end of the month. As I'm not sure whether we're to assume everybody is finished, I'll not discuss the ending except to say that if you've not finished the book & are wondering it it might be just fluff, I found it quite worthwhile & it has given me a lot to think about & I think it ends quite appropriately.
Imagining a future for Cassandra, whom I really love, I can envision a writing career rather like Emma Smith's. (Let me put in a plug for Emma Smith's memoir As Green as Grass.) I loved it when Cassandra says she doesn't want to go to college because life is the only place to study being a writer. (I wonder if Dodie Smith was invited to teach in the University of Iowa writers' workshop.) Having a lovely time thinking up a sequel for this book to take place during the Second World War. Simon would be one of those Yanks who flew for the RAF & Cassandra would be doing some kind of super hush-hush spy stuff. Stephen also appears - he's now a famous movie actor & also RAF pilot who's sent to America to seduce an American congresswoman to get he to support the British war effort. (Something like that really happened BTW.)
Liked the subplot about the father's writing block least, & didn't really believe the cure they devised. Having writers as characters in literature is tricky because to make them believable you have to give some samples of what they wrote, which means you'd have to be able to write the books they're supposed to have written - of course if you're Antonia Byatt you can. Mortmain seems to be meant as a kind of 1920s avant-garde modernist, sort of like James Joyce, but I suspect that Smith gave him a writing block so she'd not have to portray his work in much detail.
Both Rose & Cassandra would now be classified as deprived & I expect that the Social Workers would snatch them into care these days. But I'm sure Cassandra will continue to haunt me & I look forward to others' insights on her & the book.

I finished it early in the month but then didn't post this before the deadline. *sigh*

Bill,

I love your sequel suggestions!

I think it's possible to have an author character without really sharing that author's writing, especially when the main character is said author's daughter; if I remember rightly, the father in Why Not Join the Giraffes? was an author, but since his daughter just viewed writing as his job, it seemed perfectly natural that nothing he wrote was ever shared.

OTOH, I agree with you that the cure was ludicrous and wouldn't have worked. It also seemed to come out of left field, since he'd been so ignored through most of the novel.

Overall I didn't mind the ending and agree it was appropriate, but I really didn't enjoy the book much past the first section. Part of my problem with it is that Simon and Neil felt like "constructed characters" to me -- like they were designed for their function within the story and had no personalities beyond that.

Which is not to say I didn't think it worth reading. Chapter Twelve almost makes me regret my instinctive anti-social tendencies, which mean I nearly always refuse a spur-of-the-moment social gathering. If only you could guarantee agreeing to one would turn out this well! Apparently, even when I'm annoyed with the book as a whole, Dodie Smith can still pull me into some scenes.

But ultimately I felt the romantic relationship stuff mostly smothered the fun after the first section. Plus I just found the plot unrealistic after a point -- not the individual elements so much as the combination. I'll spoiler text the rest, just in case someone's reading this thread who hasn't finished it.

(view spoiler)[I don't mind Stephen having an unrequited crush on Cassandra, although unrequited love is not one of my favorite plot points, but you add in the fact that Cassandra wants Simon, who wants Rose, who wants Neil, and I was grumbling about it long before the book was over.

Chained unrequited love plots just strike me as ludicrous; in real life, I've known only one case where a guy pined after a girl who was pining after someone else, but first off this lasted only three or four weeks (the guy realized it was a lost cause and moved on), and, secondly, the guy the girl was crushing on was interested, he just wasn't as interested as she was (she wanted commitment and he wasn't going to give it). So even that "chain" of two wasn't really a chain of interested pining for disinterested.

The idea that you could have three people, or more, in a chain, all pining after someone who isn't interested while not showing any interest in the one crushing on them, all happening at the same time, doesn't work for me unless it's an over-the-top farce, because most people move on once it's clear it isn't going to work out. When one person pines, it's believable and I can sympathize; when everyone does, I start thinking they're all a bunch of idiots and lose interest in them as individuals.

The fact that I found Stephen by far the most interesting and personable of the guys doesn't help, of course. :D
(hide spoiler)]

I just had a thought on a few of the comments on the cure for the father's writing block...

I agree that the "cure" of locking him in the "prison" as they designed it wouldn't work, but I don't think that is what actually cured him. They were mistaken, but accidentally hit upon the right "cure" when Cassandra said about writing "the cat sat on the mat". He was looking for the perfect way to begin his book, and that is what he ended up using. Basically, what I got from that part is that even if they wouldn't have locked him up, if she would have just said for him to write that when he was in a receptive mood, he still would have been cured. He just needed that one little clue for it all to click together and relieve the writer's block.

Otherwise, I agree. It doesn't seem believeable to me without thinking of it that way.

Reflecting later, I don't think it matters much to the plot of I Capture the Castle that Neil & Simon are Americans; they could as well be Australian or perhaps even Scotish - just so long as they're from far away. But in 1948 Dodie Smith surely was trying to write a book that would sell big in America - there was a lot more money to be made there & it was where she was living & I think British exchange controls prevented any money she made in the UK from being spent outside the sterling zone. And for an Englishwoman, earning dollars was the patriotic thing to do @ the time! In her memoirs, Dodie Smith describes her anxiety waiting for the reviews to appear in American publications. Which may be why the beaux are attractive Yanks & Cassandra gives us those disquisitions on American idioms & table manners. Which leads to some thoughts on the brothers & the ending, which I'll hide lest you're not finished. (view spoiler)[ It is essential to the plot that the brothers be almost interchangeable, or it would be hard to imagine Rose marrying Simon when she really loved Neil & that explains all the silly business with Simon's beard & why he had to shave it off before Rose accepted his proposal - so she could try to imagine he was Neil. (BTW have you ever known anyone who married the 'wrong' brother? I know someone who told me she did.) Altho' it disappointed my romantic expectations that Cassandra refuses Simon (@ least for the time being), it was the right thing - she ought not to morph instantluy from ingenue to wealthy matron as Mrs Simon. Like a very fine wine, she needs to mature to reach her full flavour. I'd like to imagine her future as going to secretarial college, working for a London publisher & meeting lots of famous writers & maybe becoming a successful author herself as well as (if you like) finally marrying Simon. (hide spoiler)]

Kaycie wrote: "I just had a thought on a few of the comments on the cure for the father's writing block...

I agree that the "cure" of locking him in the "prison" as they designed it wouldn't work, but I don't th..."

I agree with your idea that the cure for his writer's block came from what Cassandra said to him and not from being locked up. He needed a start for his writing. He knew what he wanted to write about but didn't know how to start it.

I think so too, & as a very experienced writer herself, Dodie Smith would have known that.

I don't know how many of us actually read this book last month, but I'm sure I'd never have got round to reading it without this group. Thank you.

I have to admit, almost to the end of this section, I thought she was going to tie it all up in a neat little bow and I didn't like the direction it was going at all. But I was pleased with the ending. The "twist" with Neil was obvious a mile away, but I like what she did with Simon and Cassandra and even Stephen, it felt much more like life. Poor Stephen! But as much as I like Cassandra, frankly, I think he can do much better than her, when he finds someone that truly appreciates him.