charles-dickens

Can Escapist Fiction Be Completely Escapist?

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Barbara Taylor Bradford. (Credit: Bradford Enterprises.)

As I’ve mentioned here and there in recent months, I’ve been mixing my more-serious novel reading with a larger percentage of mass-audience and/or escapist fiction these days as I seek diversion from the distressing words and actions of America’s repulsive Trump regime. But of course those categories of literature are not always mostly upbeat.

Take Barbara Taylor Bradford, who was known for best-selling novels starring impressive, plucky women. Those characters are inspiring, yes, but some of them go through some really depressing things. I just read Bradford’s Everything to Gain, and while I enjoyed rooting for its protagonist Mallory Keswick, what happens to her family would not help the mood of any reader appalled at the latest Trump-related news.

Meanwhile, I continued this year to read many novels by Elin Hilderbrand. She is known for what have been called summer “beach reads” — most of them set on the beautiful Massachusetts island of Nantucket — but Hilderbrand is actually a much more complex and nuanced author than that. So, while I first tried her novels with escapist intent on my part, I’ve seen plenty of illness, death, and other sad developments in those books. But plenty of lighter content and entertainment, too, and I always eagerly went back for more even as I don’t get 100% relief from Trump and what he says and supports.

Detective fiction, to which I devoted a separate blog post earlier this month, can also make one temporarily forget the real world — one reason why I’ve read quite a few books in that genre this year. Then again, any novel with crime as a major element can make a reader not only sadly think about the victims but also think about one of America’s biggest criminals, who happens to currently live in the White House rather than in a jail cell where he belongs.

It can also be a refreshing interlude to read very funny fiction. The Pickwick Papers, anyone? But even that Charles Dickens book and most other comedic novels by various authors have some downbeat sections amid the humor.

One of these days I’m going to give a third reread to L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables. That iconic novel always brings a smile to my face, yet it contains some fraught moments and a heartbreaking death.

All this makes me wonder if I’ve ever read a completely upbeat novel. Not sure that even exists, and, if it did, I suppose such a book would lack adequate drama. But it would give readers a complete mental break. 🙂

Any thoughts on this post, and on novels that might be relevant to its theme?

Misty the cat says: “Pumpkins but no spice? I turn my back.”

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Misty says Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, and includes many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — about topics such as a local Charlie Kirk flag controversy and a local bookstore canceling the appearance of a Palestinian-American children’s book author — is here.

Reimagination Actualization

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Four years ago, I blogged about fiction that uses previous fiction as a jumping-off point — and perhaps reimagines well-known characters. This post is sort of a sequel to that post, taking a somewhat different angle and including several novels I’ve read since 2021.

In general, I’m not a huge fan of fiction that’s heavily inspired by a famous work; I’d rather writers be more original than that. Still, there have been some excellent novels that offer insights into the previous work and might be great in their own right.

My latest encounter with this reimagining phenomenon was Queen Macbeth, Val McDermid’s 2024 novella that takes a fascinating approach to characters in Shakespeare’s iconic Macbeth play. The book is excellent, giving Lady Macbeth a more positive (and more historically accurate) persona as a compelling plot unfolds in two different timelines.

McDermid’s book reminded me a bit of Margaret Atwood’s 2005 novella The Penelopiad (mentioned in my 2021 post) that gives Penelope a bigger and more feminist role than she had in Homer’s ancient Odyssey poem.

There’s also Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver’s 2022 tour de force that gives Charles Dickens’ 1850 classic David Copperfield a modern spin in America’s Appalachian region during the opioid epidemic.

Kristin Hannah’s gripping 2021 novel The Four Winds was obviously inspired by John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939), but it’s still plenty original and differs in featuring a female protagonist. (The title character in Demon Copperhead is male.)

Zadie Smith has described the structure/focus of her novel On Beauty (2005) as an homage to E.M. Forster’s Howards End (1910).

In her also-published-in-2005 novel March, Geraldine Brooks takes the father from Louisa May Alcott’s 1868-released Little Women and gives him his own story.

I haven’t read it yet, but Percival Everett’s acclaimed James (2024) reimagines Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) from the perspective of the escaped slave Jim.

In my 2021 post, I mentioned the 1966 novel Wide Sargasso Sea, in which Jean Rhys gives three-dimensionality to the “madwoman in the attic” of Charlotte Bronte’s novel Jane Eyre; Rhys’ creation is in effect a prequel to Bronte’s 1847 book. I also discussed the novel (by Gregory Maguire) and the play Wicked, which sympathetically portray the Wicked Witch from L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz novel (1900) and The Wizard of Oz movie (1939).

Mentioned as well in that post were Isabel Allende’s 2005 novel Zorro, Jasper Fforde’s 2001 novel The Eyre Affair, and Seth Grahame-Smith’s 2009 Jane Austen parody Pride and Prejudice and Zombies — the last of which I haven’t felt the “Persuasion” to read.

Comments about, and examples of, this theme?

Misty the cat says: “My right turn has nothing to do with politics.”

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Misty says Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — about a badly maintained lower-income apartment building, a change in venue for a senior center, and more — is here.

Self-Therapy By Book

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Thomas Mann (Picture Alliance/Ullstein Bild)

Sometimes, novels are semi-autobiographical confessionals and/or expressions of authors’ repressed thoughts and/or a way for them to “work out issues” and/or a way of reckoning with their past and/or an exercise in wish-fulfillment, etc. Sort of self-therapy by book.

I thought about this when recently reading Thomas Mann’s novellas Tonio Kroger (1903) and especially Death in Venice (1912), and seeing that there was a whole lot of male longing for other males by the protagonists. Sure enough, a little online exploring showed that Mann — the father of six with wife Katia — was sexually attracted to men, though there’s no conclusive evidence he acted on that during a more homophobic time. But he sure made his feelings known in some of his writing, as when middle-aged Death in Venice protagonist Gustav von Aschenbach (a famous author…hmm) becomes obsessed with a teen boy he finds very good-looking.

Several years later, in 1918, Willa Cather wrote perhaps her best novel: My Antonia. In it, male protagonist Jim Burden holds Antonia in such high regard that he might well be a stand-in for Cather, who was probably gay. Meaning she could have narrator Jim (i.e. Willa) express some feelings the author might have found more difficult to express if that character were a woman.

While sexual orientation isn’t a subtext (as far as I know) in Mary Shelley’s apocalyptic 1826 novel The Last Man, the author did base the male protagonist Lionel Verney on herself despite the different gender and modeled two other characters — Adrian and Lord Raymond — on her late husband Percy Bysshe Shelley and their late friend Lord Byron, respectively. So, Mary was kind of remembering and analyzing her relationships/interactions with the two famous poets.

Charlotte Bronte’s Villette (1853) also has a semi-autobiographical element: characters Lucy Snowe and Paul Emanuel are partly based on Charlotte and the real-life Constantin Heger, who Charlotte fell in love with (?) while enrolled in the Belgian boarding school run by Heger and his wife Zoe. And the downbeat tone of some of Villette was shaped to a degree by the 1848 and 1849 deaths-before-their-time of Charlotte’s younger novelist sisters Emily and Anne.

The Brontes’ contemporary Charles Dickens used a number of his novels to indirectly work through the childhood trauma that would help shape his social conscience. The future author’s father was sent to a debtors’ prison, and 12-year-old Charles had to leave school to work in a miserable factory to help support his family. Echoes of that can be found in the impoverished young characters Dickens created in David Copperfield (1850), Oliver Twist (1838), The Old Curiosity Shop (1841), and other works.

Amid the compulsive plot of his 1940 novel Native Son, Richard Wright wrestled with such matters as racism (which he experienced plenty of as a Black person) and his complicated feelings about the Communist Party USA (which he joined but later broke from).

Some authors who served in the military and were perhaps wounded in action indirectly worked through that trauma in war novels they would later write. Erich Maria Remarque — in books such as 1929’s All Quiet on the Western Front — is one prominent example of that.

Also, authors’ unrequited “crushes” in real life can provide rather intense fodder for novels, as was the case with Mann in his aforementioned Death in Venice and with Goethe in his The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774).

Thoughts about and examples of this topic?

Misty the cat says: “Halley’s Comet won’t be back until 2061, so you may not see it in this video.”

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Misty says Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for my book features a talking cat: 🙂

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — a time-warped look at a long-closed movie theater that might open again — is here.

A Cat Named Misty Writes a Post That’s Twisty

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Misty aboveground with The Underground Railroad. (Photo by Dave.)

I, Misty the cat, guest-blog for Dave every two months or so. I last did that on February 9 — after which March winds brought April winds that knocked me from a standing position onto my side. Hence the above photo.

Anyway, as I embody “suburban sprawl” I’m contemplating the just-finished The Underground Railroad. Ouch…a searing novel set during 19th-century slavery times in the U.S. — which now consists of 50 states, only seven of which have cats as governors. One thing Colson Whitehead’s book made me realize is that felines are not as hung up on color as many white humans were and are. Heck, whether a cat is gray or black or orange or another hue, I glare at each one equally if they bother me during my daily leashed walks. After all, I’m the mayor of my apartment complex, though I don’t remember being elected. Maybe it was a coup.

The novel Dave and I read before The Underground Railroad was another installment of Val McDermid’s excellent series starring cold-case detective Karen Pirie, who Dave emulates by bringing home cold cases of cat food every winter. The Pirie novel was Broken Ground — a title that intrigued me because I also broke ground when I vigorously scratched in the dirt, searching for the paperwork certifying my mayoral election win.

Next in my near-future reading queue are the first novels I’ll be trying by Alexander McCall Smith, who makes me also want a multi-part name — perhaps Misty McKitty Bloggerslogger, which would sure beat being known as the title character in Wilkie Colllins’ novel No Name. Anyway, both soon-to-be-read-by-me McCall Smith books — 44 Scotland Street and The Sunday Philosophy Club — kick off respective series, and the latter title has already inspired me not to be philosophical Monday through Saturday. I also want to read another McCall Smith series opener — The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency — but it’s not currently in my local library. As a cat lacking opposable thumbs, I couldn’t have grabbed hold of it anyway.

I do like strolling library aisles on my four paws, and have noticed that novels are shelved alphabetically by author. How Jane Austen shelved her own books — alphabetically or otherwise — in my town’s 1955-built library I have no idea; she passed away in 1817. Maybe she had Charles Dickens do it for her. Or the shelver might have been Dickens’ friend, the aforementioned Wilkie Collins, who also wrote the early detective novel The Moonstone. Dogs howl at its cover.

Dickens was born in 1812, so his and Austen’s lives overlapped for five years — giving them enough time to collaborate on the novel Sense and Nicholas Nickleby. Epic, albeit lacking in Sensibility.

Another writing pair is Vicki Myron and Bret Witter, who co-authored the heartwarming nonfiction book Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World. The library my fellow feline Dewey inhabited was in Iowa, one of the 43 states without a feline governor. Iowa has 75% vowels, though.

Returning to discussion of The Underground Railroad, that 2016 novel published a year after my 2015 birth still strongly resonates in 2025 given that the U.S. has a president (Donald Trump), a “co-president” (Elon Musk), and a vice president (JD Vance) so racist they renamed the late Amy Winehouse’s “Back to Black” album “Back to White.” Trump then exempted it from high tariffs.

Dave will respond to comments because I, Misty the cat, will be busy swatting high tariffs off the kitchen counter. They then become lower tariffs.

Misty the cat says: “I’m doing the annual Flower Walk to raise money for the annual Flower Walk.”

I and Dave’s comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s narrated by me, Misty! (And I say Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for my and Dave’s book features a talking cat (sort of me, Misty): 🙂

Dave is also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more.

In addition to this weekly blog, Dave writes the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — about another lawsuit, a large local anti-Trump/Musk rally, and more — is here.