Wednesday, May 15, 2013

The Great Gatsby - Book Club Meeting

The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925



Hiya Dolls!  Welcome to the April Meeting of The Vintage Project Book Club!

It seems like I just hosted a book club meeting - and that's probably because I just did.  The March meeting was incredibly late, but I'm happy that the April meeting is a smidgen more timely.  Yes, April was not nearly as hectic, but also, I picked up The Great Gatsby and couldn't put it down.  This novel was a quick read, partially because it is significantly shorter than Oil!, but also because it is so brilliantly written.  It is captivating and engrossing and transports you to a different time and place.  

And that place is Long Island and that time is The Roaring Twenties - three months during the summer of 1922, to be precise.  Our narrator, Nick Carraway functions as less of a character in this novel and more of a voyeur to the characters and events of this story making the reader feel like they are right there in the middle of the fabulous parties and opulent settings.  "When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction - Gatsby who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness...was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No - Gatsby turned out all right in the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.'

Nick Carraway moves to a house in West Egg Village for which he pays $80 a month and estimates that the extravagant house next door, which we later find out belongs to the infamous Mr. Gatsby, costs anywhere from $12,000 to $15,000 a month...can you imagine?  In the 1920's...what would that be now???  No matter how much money there is on West Egg it is all New Money and looked down upon from across the bay by the Old Money of East Egg.  It is in East Egg Village, in the significantly larger mansions, where Tom and Daisy Buchanan live.  Daisy is Nick's cousin and she is described in such a way that you are immediately drawn to her.  'I've heard it said that Daisy's murmur was only to make people lean towards her, an irrelevant criticism that made it no less charming...It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth - but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget; a singing compulsion, a whispered "Listen," a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.'  We quickly learn that the marriage of Tom and Daisy is strained and that they do not live the enviable life that is conveyed to the outside world.  This theme of illusion is common throughout the novel - nothing is quite as it seems.  Tom is carrying on an affair which Daisy (and it seems everyone in New York) is aware of, Daisy is not happy, and Gatsby...well Gatsby is a fascinating enigma.  One that is largely responsible for this novel being considered by many to be The Great American Novel.

It is after our first encounter with the Buchanans that we get our initial glimpse of Nick's neighbor, Jay Gatsby.  'Something in his leisurely movements and the secure position of his feet upon the lawn suggested that it was Mr. Gatsby himself, come out to determine what share was his of our local heavens.'  Gatsby remains a mystery through much of the story.  No one really knows who he is, but everyone has heard some story or piece of gossip and are all willing to share them.  His extreme wealth adds even more fuel to the fire.  '"They say he's a nephew or cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm's. That's where all his money comes from."  "He doesn't want any trouble with anybody...somebody told me they thought he killed a man once." "I don't think it's so much that...it's more that he was a German spy during the war."'  And then there are some people who heard all the stories and started putting them together.  '"He's a bootlegger...One time he killed a man who had found out that he was nephew to Von Hindenberg and second cousin to the devil."'  From the beginning of the story, Gatsby is shrouded in mystery - no one knows anything about him for certain, only that he throws lavish, opulent parties.  'There was music from my neighbor's house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars...I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby's house I was one of the few guests who had actually been invited. People were not invited - they went there.'  Gatsby's parties are not events so much as destinations, many people flocking or simply finding themselves there as this was a place where no one had received the message that the Eighteenth Amendment had prohibited alcohol in the United States.  As in many well-to-do places within the country, Prohibition had given rise to bootleggers, organized crime, and the idea that wealth could buy complete exemption from this restriction.  At Gatsby's the cocktails and champagne flowed freely and yet, people went to his parties not for the booze, but more so the ability to set their eyes on the infamous Gatsby, and perhaps walk away with a piece of his wealth for themselves - 'They were, at least, agonizingly aware of the easy money in the vicinity and convinced that it was theirs for a few words in the right key.'

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Nick Carraway is different.  He is not looking to gain anything from a relationship with Gatsby and Gatsby seems to sense this; they quickly develop a legitimate friendship despite the fact that Gatsby is looking to rekindle his relationship with Daisy.  He has been in love with her for 5 years and after he went off to war and she married Tom, he still has hope that they can be together again.  'I think he half expected her to wander into one of his parties, some night...but she never did...'  After years of throwing his parties in hopes that Daisy would attend one, he finally finds someone who knows her.  He gets Jordan, Daisy and Nick's friend, to ask Nick to invite Daisy for tea.  The first meeting for them is incredibly awkward, but after a short time, they rekindle their romance.  Gatsby invites Nick and Daisy over to his house so that he can show Daisy how well he's done for himself.  'He hadn't once ceased looking at Daisy and I think he revalued everything in his house according to the measure of response that it drew from her well-loved eyes. Sometimes, too, he stared around at his possessions in a dazed way as though in her actual astounding presence none of it was any longer real..."If it wasn't for the mist we could see your home across the bay," said Gatsby. "You always have a green light at the end of your dock." Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever. Compared to the great distance that had separated him from Daisy it had seemed very near to her, almost touching her. It had seemed as close as a star to the moon.'

A few days before Nick invited Daisy to tea, Tom had taken Nick into the city, to the flat that Tom kept for his mistress Myrtle.  There, Myrtle's sister Catherine told Nick '"Neither one of them can stand the person they're married to."' as if that was all reason that was needed for this to be perfectly acceptable.  The party went all day and well into the night and as Nick took everything in, he felt an odd detachment from the whole scene.  'I was within and without simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.'  At the end of the night Tom lost his temper and broke Myrtle's nose - and I believe that seeing that is what made Nick agree to bring Gatsby and Daisy together.  The fact that they had been in love since before the war and that Gatsby made something of himself so that they could be together again makes this affair acceptable - even preferable to Nick.

For a short period of time, everything was fabulous.  Nick was seeing Jordan.  Tom was seeing Myrtle without her husband being the wiser.  Daisy and Gatsby were happy and in love and she was ready to end things with Tom.  It was exactly what Gatsby had waited five years for.  'He wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and say: "I never loved you." After she had obliterated three years with that sentence they could decide upon more practical measures to be taken..."I wouldn't ask too much of her," I ventured. "You can't repeat the past."  "Can't repeat the past?" he cried incredulously. "Why of course you can!...I'm going to fix everything just the way it was before...She'll see."'  And one afternoon, Daisy and Gatsby ask Nick and Jordan to come to the Buchanan house as a kind of insurance policy - Daisy was finally ready to leave Tom.  As would be expected, she becomes very nervous and decides that they were all going into the city; in all the activity, Daisy lets her guard down and Tom finally understands what has been going on under his nose the whole time.  The group takes two cars - Tom drives Nick and Jordan in Gatsby's custom yellow Rolls Royce while Gatsby takes Daisy in Tom's blue coupé - and they head in the stifling summer heat to New York City.  Once there, they rent a room at the Waldorf and it is there that everything comes to a head.  '"What kind of a row are you trying to cause in my house anyhow?" They were out in the open at last and Gatsby was content. "He isn't causing a row." Daisy looked desperately from one to the other. "You're causing a row. Please have a little self control." "Self control!" repeated Tom incredulously, "I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife. Well, if that's the case you can count me out...."'  Tom's anger makes Daisy even more adamant in her choice and when she insists that she does not love Tom, he protests, insisting that she does, in fact, love him.  '"And what's more, I love Daisy too. Once in a while I go off on a spree and make a fool of myself, but I always come back, and in my heart I love her all the time."'  It is not until Tom pushes Gatsby too far with his comments that no matter how much money Gatsby has, he will never be as good as everyone else, that Gatsby loses his trademark calm demeanor and attacks Tom that Daisy becomes so upset that she starts questioning her decision to leave Tom.  So in an extremely agitated state, Daisy and Gatsby leave in Gatsby's flashy yellow car and the rest leave in Tom's coupé a few minutes later.  The drive back to Long Island is the point of no return for Gatsby.  What started out as such a promising day, ends in tragedy and seals the fate of our characters.

Now, usually I do not give the end of the novels away, but in this case, I'm making an exception since the last pages of this novel make the story beautifully tragic.  Nick, Jordan, and Tom come across police activity in the road halfway home - there has been an accident.  Myrtle has been struck and killed by a car.  A yellow car.  A yellow car that did not stop.  Myrtle's husband is devastated and swears revenge on the person who took his wife's life - something which Tom is glad to hear.  When the three of them arrive back at the Buchanan house, Nick finds Gatsby hiding in the bushes, watching the house.  Daisy is already inside and he wants to make sure that, in his rage, Tom does not harm her.  Despite the events of the day, Gatsby still believes that things will work out for the two of them...he is as in love with her as ever and will do whatever he can to protect her.  In speaking with him, something dawns on Nick, '"Was Daisy driving?" "Yes," he said after a moment, "but of course I'll say I was. You see, when we left New York she was very nervous and she thought it would steady her to drive - and this woman rushed out at us...it seemed to me that she wanted to speak to us, thought we were somebody she knew."'  And he was right.  Myrtle had been married to the man who owns the garage that Tom stopped at on the way into the city earlier that day...at the time, he'd been driving Gatsby's yellow car.  Gatsby never learned of this small detail, never knew that her husband had sworn himself to revenge in his desperation.  The consequences of that night's actions were the furthest thing from his mind - what consumed it was the hope that Daisy was going to call the next day and that they were still going to be together.  'No telephone message arrived...I have an idea that Gatsby himself didn't believe it would come and perhaps he no longer cared. If that was true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream.'  It is a hauntingly poetic thought that, internally, Gatsby had given up and already started to mourn the life he had so long dreamt of with Daisy, when Myrtle's husband fatally shot him later that morning and then turned the gun on himself.

Since reading this novel for the Book Club, I've opened it up to the end a few times - deep down hoping that the ending would change, but so far it has not.  It's just too sad - and perhaps this ending is what prevented me from actually putting this post together sooner as I had finished the novel on time.  Everything that Gatsby did was to make a life with Daisy - and he paid the ultimate price for that.  After his death, everyone turned on him - not that any of his party-goers were really his friend to begin with, but the newspapers reported that everything was his fault, which guaranteed that everyone stayed away.  The only loyalty was Nick's.  'I found myself on Gatsby's side, and alone. From the moment I telephoned news of the catastrophe to West Egg Village, every surmise about him and every practical question, was referred to me. At first I was surprised and confused; then as he lay in his house and didn't move or breathe or speak hour upon hour it grew upon me that I was responsible because no one else was interested - interested, I mean, with that intense personal interest to which everyone has some vague right in the end.'  And in the end, the only ones who attended his funeral were Nick, Gatsby's father, and a handful of servants.  The party was over.  The lights had been turned out, and no one was ever coming back.

Fatal flaws not withstanding, Jay Gatsby was a good man.  Perhaps his biggest flaw was that he had too much hope.  Throughout the course of the novel, we learn that he was born dirt poor and decided to leave in order to make something of himself - to reinvent himself.  He embodied the American Dream in that he made himself who he wanted to be - he was driven and enterprising and determined.  He owned a beautiful house and beautiful cars and beautiful clothes.  He was successful by most people's standards, but he remained poor.  What he wanted most in this world was to love and be loved by Daisy in return...what he never realized was that he was too good for Daisy.  The day he died, she did not call and she did not attend his funeral...instead she and Tom left town.  'They were careless people, Tom and Daisy - they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money on their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made...'

In the end, everything was different and everyone was gone.  The night before Nick left West Egg, he spent a long while on Gatsby's dock, reflecting on Gatsby - and himself.  '...I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dreams must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him...Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch our arms father...And one fine morning--- So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.'

And so Dolls, I raise my champagne coupe to Gatsby, The GREAT Gatsby!  Will you do the same?

Friday, May 10, 2013

Oma's 86th Birthday Soirée Planning

Invitations?  Check.

I have mentioned my Oma (German for Grandmother) a few times in previous posts, but have not really gone into too much detail.  There's SO much that I could say, but I'll just make a general statement and say that she's amazing!  And has been amazing for almost 86 years.  That's right Lovelies, Oma turns 86 on June 3rd!

Last year, we were trying to organize an 85th Birthday Soirée, but she was not too keen on the idea.  Once we were finally able to convince her that a party was necessary, it was too close to the date and we made her agree to a party the next year and to PROMISE that she would not change her mind.  I am happy to report that she has not changed her mind and we are in full-blown planning mode!

Time somehow got away from me (shocking, I know!), but I was able to design and order the invitations from VistaPrint and rush the order.  It was all very simple and, as the Soirée planner extraordinaire, Stephanie, suggested, I was able to very easily find online deals which saved me a good deal of money.  I will definitely be using this site again and will always start with searching for deals online!  (I suggest you do the same.)

I decided on a simple muted purple invite with matching pre-printed envelopes for the occasion and I was quite happy with how everything turned out!



Word to the wise - as fantastic as your envelopes are, you do not need an extra 20.  Trust me on this one.
Port and I settled ourselves at the coffee table with a glass of wine and the address list and started addressing the invitations.


The invites arrived on Wednesday and I had the envelopes stuffed, addressed, and dropped off at the Post Office on Thursday.  By my calculations that should slot them to arrive by Saturday since most of the addresses are local.  I suggest some of you watch your mailboxes!

Up until now, I had never actually sent out physical invitations and I think I'm hooked.  It just adds an element of glam that an Evite simply cannot.  Even the simplest of invitations make people feel special - like you've taken the time and put forth the effort and that just makes it so much better!    

Do you typically just throw an Evite together or have you discovered just how great actual invitations are?  Am I the last one to the party?
XOXO

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Mad Men Cocktail Hour - The Harpoon

Good Evening Kittens!

For thirteen weeks out of the year, Sunday night is an institution.  Mad Men night is one of the highlights of my week and this season I've upped the ante!  I have a new downstairs neighbor, Bridget, who has become my Mad Men partner in crime and I couldn't be more excited.  She comes up every Sunday to watch the show we're both obsessed with and last week I decided that the show was a fantastic excuse to expand my cocktail repertoire...admittedly, being a cocktail novice, that's quite simple to do.  It was as if Mad Men knew that I'd appreciate a place to start with era-appropriate cocktails when they put together the Mad Men Cocktail Guide.

To start this new Sunday night tradition off, I decided on the Harpoon.  I'd never heard of this cocktail before and I realized that it was because we now call them Cosmopolitans.  From the little information that I could find on this cocktail, it was an early incarnation of both the Cape Codder (which is the original name of the Cape Cod - a piece of information an elderly bartender once bestowed upon me) and then later, the Cosmopolitan.  The Harpoon is a cocktail that was originally an Ocean Spray recipe on their bottles of juice...things were a little different (more fun) back in the late 50's when cocktail recipes were so readily available!  Here's a little cocktail history for you.

photo courtesy of Bridget
After a few Harpoons (I think I'm going to start referring to Cosmopolitans as Harpoons), which were incredibly yummy, in case you were wondering, Bridget told me that she had a little beef with the lack of credit I gave Betty in my last Mad Men post.  She made a good point about me not showing her any love and showing Joan and Peggy more love because I'm more like them and, not surprisingly,have more respect for them.  But Betty IS a dying breed of woman, one that died out in the 1960's; and while she faces extinction, her role (though not her specifically) does deserve more credit than I gave her.  This is something that we can, and will, discuss later, but right now I want to take our conversation back to my favorite woman on the show - Joan.

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In this week's episode, Episode 6 - 'Available for Immediate Release', we saw Joan step outside of herself and, for the first time, act in a very emotionally honest way in at work when she blows up at Don.  We've always seen Joan very put together and very pulled together.  She handles situations with grace and class and does not outwardly react to things that would rile most people up.  Since Joan landed the Jaguar account for SCDP by sleeping with the greasy Jaguar exec Herb, we've seen Don become very protective of her.  Throughout Season 6, we've seen Herb a few times and witnessed Don's disgust grow with each interaction - he simply can't seem to NOT hold the incident with Joan against him.  And finally in this episode, Don fires Jaguar.  He thinks Joan will feel "300 pounds lighter", but her reaction was, to me, unexpected: "Honestly Don, if I could deal with him, you could deal with him.  And what now?  I went through all of that for nothing?"  The second those words were out of her mouth, I completely understood.  Over the course of one dinner, Don rendered what Joan did unimportant and stripped her sacrifice of its value.  

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While I know that particular episode was very controversial and debated for weeks afterwards, I can't blame Joan for what she did.  The blame needs to be placed squarely on Herb for making that request instead of on Joan who did what she felt she had to in order to save SCDP.  She felt responsible for everyone she worked with and also wanted to ensure that she was able to take care of her child.  I know there are people who will argue her values and morals, but not unlike today, women of that era had to make tough decisions.  Joan definitely wrestled with the choice of whether or not she would go against what she knew was right in order to ensure that SCDP was successful and also to ensure her financial freedom and ability to fully take care of herself and her child as a single woman.  In the end, is it better to stay with, or go back to a man like her husband, or is it better to bend her morals for a night in order to save herself and the company from financial ruin?  It's a tough question that I hope all of us never have to make. By no means am I going to start using the phrase 'Saint Joan', but I think what she did (especially with the fact that she knew all the partners would know what choice she made) was incredibly brave.  

What are your thoughts?  Whether you agree with me about Joan or not, I hope you are enjoying the season so far.  And I hope you start including era-appropriate cocktails as part of your Sunday night viewing experience, they truly make things more festive!

Cheers to all my Mad Wo'Men out there!  Or as Lane would have said, 'Chin Chin'!!

Sunday, May 5, 2013

Bubby's Brunch Cookbook

Good Morning Kittens!!

Sunday Morning is upon us again, or as I like to refer to it - The Brunching Hour!

Unfortunately, I've had a little Brunch slump...two cancelled Brunches in the past month. Quelle Horreur!!!  While the reasons were valid, the fact remains that I'm going through Brunch withdrawals at the moment, though I am incredibly happy to report that I may very well have TWO Brunches next week!!!  There are few things better than that!

While I have many things on my schedule for today, Brunch is not one of them.  Le sigh.  So, the next best thing to actual Brunch is reliving one of the best Brunches EVER by receiving the restaurant's cookbook in the mail!  On Friday, I received a fantastic surprise - the official Bubby's Brunch Cookbook!!!  I feel like the heavens opened and the angels started singing...okay, that might be just a tad dramatic, but I was incredibly excited!  I'm SO looking forward to making some of these recipes!!


Two years ago, I found myself celebrating my 30th birthday in New York, the lucky 'plus one' of the most A-Mazing friend anyone could ever hope for, Stephanie.  She won an all-expenses paid trip to New York which just so happened to fall on my birthday, my actual birthday!  I think there is a lot of pressure, especially on women, when it comes to the dreaded 30th birthday...we cannot help by compare our lives to what we'd expected them to be by that age...especially for the single ladies, it can be incredibly depressing.  In addition to that for me, there was a little (read - a LOT) of drama with planning some type of celebration with the family.  About a week prior, my white flag of surrender went up and I was simply done with the whole thing.  There was dread instead of my usual level of excitement for my birthday (if you were following the goings-on last month, you will understand).  So Stephanie was a life-saver - scooping me up and taking me to New York!!!  It could not have been more perfect.

Both Stephanie and I had never been to New York before and wanted to stay away from the touristy spots so that we could get a feel for the neighborhoods during our down-time (I'm sure at some point, I'll talk about our FABULOUS trip), and it was the best time imaginable!  One morning, we received the best piece of advice - go to Bubby's.  So we started walking towards Tribecca and went to Bubby's for Brunch.  Here is the rundown of our Bubby's experience.  Enjoy!

Outside Bubby's.  When you come across a fake cow, you really have no choice but to make your friend stand next to it and take a photo!
Menus
Bubby's manifesto.  So lovely!
We were there for Brunch - this was a foregone conclusion...
Photo courtesy of Stephanie - sometimes I miss my two-toned hair.
Stephanie and I were fascinated with the idea of Sourdough pancakes - especially  ones  made from a starter from 1890.  They did NOT disappoint!
Neither one of us can explain how it took 4 days to figure out that since we kept ordering the same things that it would be a good idea to order two different things and split them.  Here are our sourdough pancakes (the best pancakes I've ever had) , eggs, and potatoes.  ABSOLUTELY PHENOMENAL!!!
After Brunch, we decided to take the subway to the Met...this is us not understanding how we were unable to find the subway itself!!

Yes, I will definitely have to put a post together to chronicle our other New York adventures...

What was your best Brunch experience, Kittens?  Do you still relive it from time to time?
XOXO

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

May Book Club Selection

Happy May Lovelies!

How we're already in the month of May, I have no idea!  April simply FLEW by!!  Regardless of how exactly it happened, we're back at selection time for The Vintage Project Book Club.  Last month, was the first month that I selected from the BBC list instead of the L.A. Weekly list and I thought I would stick with the theme of re-reading the classics that we probably didn't appreciate as much as we should have in high school.

This is a British first edition. You can find later editions here.

My May selection might just be my favorite novel.  Alright, so as not to play favorites with my literary children, I'll say it's definitely in the Top 5 and leave it at that.  I read George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four as part of a summer reading list for my sophomore year English class.  I remember the experience of reading this novel - I was in Germany on vacation with Oma and with all our activities, I hadn't been reading to stay on schedule, so one day, with no activities planned, I sat down with this novel.  We were visiting my paternal grandmother and I remember sitting in her kitchen, the day running its course, and I could not put this book down.  I don't remember how long it took me to finish, but I know that I sat there that an entire day!  While I'm slightly fuzzy on some of the details, I remember the brilliance of this novel and how it affected me.  This novel is referenced constantly, isn't it time we gave it another read?

As I do not still have that particular novel, I ordered a new one - and while I was at it, I picked up a copy of Animal Farm as well, since I've never read that one.  May is shaping up to be a VERY busy, very Orwell-filled month!  You can see The Vintage Project Book Club listing in its entirety on Book Club page.  I've updated it for May.

Happy Reading Lovelies, I hope to see you at the May Book Club Meeting!!
XOXO

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Mad Men - The Ladies

Hello Kittens!

Show of hands - who is obsessed with Mad Men?  (My hand is raised)  Now keep your hand up if you have been obsessed with this show for years.  (My hand's still up)  If you've had a love affair with Mad Men from the second you started watching it, we have much in common and my raised hand is wriggling its fingers in your direction!

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I'm surprised that it's taken me until the fourth week of this new season for me to post about Mad Men, but as I mentioned when I posted about Bates Motel, my TV was on the fritz and I was thankfully able to catch up On Demand once it was back up and running.  As of last night, I'm caught up except for the most recent episode.  I was going to wait until I was completely caught up and talk about the season thus far, but I started writing this post as a draft and it simply decided to let it go in whatever direction it wanted.  And that direction was...the ladies of this fabulous show!

This first season of Mad Men was set in 1960 and the story has spanned almost an entire decade.  The Season 6 premiere began at the very end of 1967 and included the 1968 New Year celebrations; I thought it was brilliant to time the new season with a new year!  Another aspect of the show that I find brilliant is the fashion and decor - they've been absolutely fabulous from the get-go!  Janie Bryant, the costume designer is absolutely amazing and I would LOVE for her to live with me and dress me like Joan every day, though I'm positive I'm not alone in that.  Bryant has designed two Mad Men inspired collections for Banana Republic, one in 2011 and one earlier in 2013.  Though we've seen the styles evolve (something that is very apparent when you compare the two collections), the look of the show remains so authentic that there is nothing that even comes close to looking costumey.  That is something which is such a problem when people try to adopt a vintage look.  Aside from the women of Mad Men, only Dita Von Teese can really pull that look off.

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The dapper gentlemen of Mad Men?  Well, they're incredibly handsome, but the women of this show are just phenomenal, both in their styles and their characters.  It's rare to see what the women of this period actually dealt with - and perhaps this show influenced The Vintage Project more than I truly realized.  Joan in particular.  Joan is my favorite!  While Betty appeared to be channelling Grace Kelly when she was married to Don, she didn't have much else to offer.  Here we saw a little girl in a woman's body; she was selfish and self-absorbed which made her a bad wife, a bad mother, and simply a bad person.  I don't, in any way condone Don's infidelity, but I don't think I was alone when I didn't really judge him too harshly for it.

Peggy was the opposite.  While she was very young at the beginning of the series, she was mature and smart, and represented the women that got in and played with the boys, paving the way for other women to be taken seriously and get ahead in, not only a very chauvinistic time, but a very chauvinistic business.  Peggy has definitely made mistakes, but it is a testament to her talent and her work ethic that Don respects her as much as he does.  What I'm loving is that she has very much come into her own and in many ways, has become the Don of her new agency.  I thought it was amazing to hear Don's words come out of Peggy's mouth at the Heinz meeting.  "If you don't like what they're saying, change the conversation."  I loved hearing that!  Though Don did not share my enthusiasm.

Finally, the strongest woman of the bunch.  While Joan is STUNNING, she's also incredibly intelligent and capable.  She knows how women are seen and 'their place', and while she plays the game only as much as she has to, she runs the day-to-day operations of the agency.  This is a woman strong enough to kick her husband out when he's not treating her the way she deserves, and raise a child on her own.  And she does this all while being classy and fabulous!  Of all the women that we've seen on this show, aside from Anna (the REAL Mrs. Draper who Don took care of for years despite not having any responsibility to do so), he does not respect or treat any woman as well as he does Joan.  And while there will always be chemistry and history with Roger, there is a special interaction between her and Don.  She supports him while putting him in his place when he needs it, and I've always loved the 'will-they, won't-they' aspect to their relationship.  As with Peggy, Don is very protective of Joan, which endears Don to me in a very poignant way.

photo credit

























I should probably cover Megan as well, but I'm really not interested in doing that.  I see her relevance, but personally, I find her rather uninteresting.  Perhaps it's just that I'm not nearly as attached or invested in her as I am the other women (alright, maybe not Betty, but it's kind of fun never knowing the insane things that she's going to do or say...do we remember the conversation with Henry in bed during the season premiere?!?!?).  Though I will say that Megan has been far more interesting in the first few episodes of this season that she's been in previous seasons...

While the ladies are definitely not the focus of Mad Men, they have come to represent a very important part of the show as it has progressed.  Yes, the agency is overflowing with testosterone and machismo and the women are still objectified, but we've witnessed them come a long way in the last eight years.  When you compare how the women of Sterling Cooper were treated in the first season with how the women on the show as a whole are being treated in season six, it's impossible not to see how different things are - not only at the agency, but also outside of it.  The 1960's were a very important time for women's progress and I feel like we can see that in this show.  By 1968, Joan and Peggy kick ass at work and are completely independent, Megan is making a name for herself independently of Don, and Betty....well, Betty's still a train wreck, so nothing has changed there.

For a more in depth look at our Ladies, The Guardian ran a great article before the Season 6 Premiere which you can read here. Using historical points of reference, this article guarantees that we will see these ladies make huge strides in the remaining time we have with this show and I'm definitely looking forward to it!!

What do you think Kittens?  Are you as enamoured with these fabulous ladies, their wardrobes, and what's to come as I am??
XOXO

Sunday, April 28, 2013

Witness to a Proposal

Hello there Lovelies!

I come to you slightly worse for the wear as I consumed more Bubbly yesterday than anything else.  It happens...

photo credit

I started with a Housewarming Brunch with some great friends (which accidentally lasted all day) and then hurried home so that I could jump into the shower and get ready for the 30th birthday party for Aaron, my friend Brianne's boyfriend.  I was tired and late and didn't have time to eat anything, so I was entertaining the idea of not going, but I knew it was going to be a great time and my friend Sakura, who I love dearly, had flown into town for the event.  Since this was a Black and White Ball, I got myself together, selected one of my many black and white dresses, and called a cab.

Aaron rented out Falcon on Sunset and I had heard that there were over 250 RSVPs, which is madness.  This was a fabulous spot for his birthday and performances from the band that he manages, Badflower and a friend of his who spun late into the evening.  If you know Aaron, it's no surprise that he wanted something big and over the top, that's just the way he is - and since 30 is a significant birthday that people want to be memorable, I didn't question him pulling out all the stops and having his entire family and all his friends there.  But when someone like Sakura who does not come home very often, flew in for the event, I SHOULD have questioned whether she knew something that the rest of us didn't.  Should have, but didn't.

Around midnight, Aaron took the stage and a few hundred people joined the band in singing him Happy Birthday.  True to form, he grabbed the mic and started a rather lengthy speech.  It was at this point that Sakura grabbed me and the other girls and started pulling us closer to the stage with tears in her eyes and started whispering "This is it!  This is it!"  And as Aaron spoke about how much Brianne, in the last eight years, had helped make him the man that he is today, it all came together and I KNEW what was coming.  The words sort of blur together now, but I do remember him saying that even Mother Teresa wouldn't have been able to put up with him for this long.

And then he pulled a small box out of his coat pocket and got down on one knee.  Brianne was completely shocked and everyone had tears in their eyes and I had goosebumps.  I don't think she meant to be funny or a little mean, but I think her delayed response to Aaron's question was due to the shock of it all.  He was right when he said that that night was the last night that she would have ever expected it to happen.  And then she said yes and everyone cheered and bottles of Bubbly were popped and it was fabulous!

It took quite a long time to be able to cut through all the people to actually congratulate them and get a good look at the ring.  It's perfect for Brianne, it was Aaron's mother's engagement ring that his father had made from stones from his grandmother's ring.  I probably butchered that story, but I do know that it's a family heirloom, completely unique, and completely perfect.


I had never witnessed a proposal  before last night and I was completely blown away by how much I was affected.  Usually a quiet, private moment, this was exactly how I had pictured that it would happen for them, though, to be honest, after eight years, I had started to think that they would just pull a Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell and never actually get married.  While Brianne is more low-key, judging from this party, the wedding will be one spectacular event!

I wish them all the happiness in the world and I could not be more thrilled for this fantastic couple!!

Have you ever witnessed a proposal?  I feel like most people only ever witness theirs, so it's pretty fabulous to be a part of that for someone else.  

Kisses!!

Saturday, April 27, 2013

Let's Bring Back

Good Morning Kittens!

'When was the last time you wore a cape to the opera? Or white gloves to lunch? Why did we ever do away with bed curtains or cuckoo clocks? Whatever happened to parlor games, calling cards, double features, duels, monocles, riddles, turbans and parasols? Well, let's bring them back!'

Since starting The Vintage Project, I have been on a book-buying frenzy!  In addition to finding books for the monthly book club selections, I'm finding so much supplemental reading material that looks fantastic!  I learned about this particular book from a friend of mine and Let's Bring Back looks PERFECT for The Vintage Project!  Lesley M. M. Blume is an author, journalist, and cultural observer based in New York City.  She has written many things, but her Huffington Post column of the same name inspired this little encyclopedia of fabulosity!  Blume has also penned a Let's Bring Back cocktail edition and a language edition which should also be fun to read...but let's just start with this one, shall we?

Pick up your copy here

As soon as I received this little treasure, I quickly flipped through it and I'm very much looking forward to sitting down with it and a nice cup of coffee on Saturday mornings!  I have no doubt this will inspire some truly fabulous blog material!  Until then, here is a little teaser of things that we should bring back...

Hats on men and manners!

Until I report back Kittens!
XOXO

Friday, April 26, 2013

The Cinematic Experience - There Will Be Blood

There Will Be Blood, 2007

Hello there Lovelies!

When I decided to read Oil!, I made peace with the fact that I was going to have to watch the movie adaptation, There Will Be Blood which was directed by Paul Thomas Anderson.  I believe I saw this shortly after it was released on DVD - and HATED it!  While I was reading Oil! I must admit that Dad was my favorite character and I was looking forward to rewatching this movie even less since I could not remember being able to find any redeeming qualities in Daniel Day Lewis' portrayal of him.  To my utter amazement, in it's second viewing, I truly enjoyed this movie!  How the hell did that happen??

Watch the trailer here
May I present to you, for your listening pleasure while you read this post, Brahms' Violin Concerto in D Major which plays during the end credits of the film - it is truly a gorgeous piece.

There Will Be Blood is VERY different from Oil!.  Anderson has stated that he only incorporated the first 150 pages of the novel, using Sinclair's settings and a few of the major characters as inspiration and then made his own movie.  I like that he focused on the oil and the greed and left the political climate of the time out of his film, but the compassion and likability of Dad is absent in the last half of this version.  In Upton Sinclair's novel, our protagonist was Bunny (who in the film is named H.W. Plainview), but the film focuses on Daniel Plainview instead.  H.W. in this adaptation is an orphan who Plainview raises as his own son after the man who found him is killed in an accident in one of his early oil wells.  The film opens with him prospecting in the late 1800's, but the story really gets going with a meeting for a prospective lease - during the same trip that opens the novel.  Plainview sells himself as a family man, and you can see the close relationship that he has with the child, but in a tragic accident while drilling in Little Boston (the film's version of Paradise), H.W. loses his hearing.  This event effectively ends this relationship and Plainview sends the boy away to a special school in San Francisco.  The relationship is over, and it is clear that it is the event that forever hardens this man.  What I thought was a brilliant choice by Anderson, who both wrote and directed the film, is that the first 14 minutes and 30 seconds has no dialogue, which is a nice foreshadowing to H.W. losing his hearing.

The first words we hear are at the meeting in Signal Hill where Plainview introduces himself to both his audience at the meeting and the audience of the film.  "Ladies and Gentlemen, I've traveled over half our state to be here tonight...I'm a family man - I run a family business. This is my son and my partner, H.W. Plainview. We offer you the bond of family that very few oilmen can understand." While he ultimately walks away from this prospective lease, just like in the novel, it is here that we see Paul for the first, and only, time.  Instead of being a major character like in Oil!, here he seeks out Plainview to let him know (for a price) of oil on the land where he grew up - where is family still lives.  This takes the film to Little Boston where the father and son visit under the pretense of quail hunting, find oil, and purchase all the land they can lay their hands on.  The introductory speech to the people of this community is amazing - and as I have learned, was completely improvised by Daniel Day Lewis.  It is very easy to see how these people believed the promises that he made to them.


Little Boston is where the bulk of this very long film takes place...where Sinclair's novel is 540 pages long, Anderson's film is over 2 1/2 hours long!  Here is where the relationship between father and son disintegrates after H.W. loses his hearing, where Plainview amasses more oil than he could ever dream of, and where he ultimately loses any vestiges of his humanity.  "I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people...there are times when I look at people and I see nothing worth liking. I want to earn enough money that I can get away from everyone...I've built up my hatred little by little."  It is at an oil meeting that we see him completely lose it for the first, but definitely not the last, time.  "Did you just tell me how to run my family? One night I'm going to come to you inside your house, or wherever you're sleeping, and I'm going to cut your throat... You don't tell me about my son!"

After sending his son away, Plainview is in a vulnerable place and easily accepts a man who shows up, claiming to be his brother, Henry, into his life.  He grows very close to Henry very quickly and wants him to become his business partner, but that all changes when it is revealed he is an impostor and Daniel puts a gun up to 'Henry's' head and kills him.  Plainview is once more alone with his oil - the way he will remain throughout his life.

A peripheral story line in the novel that I skimmed over in my book review was that of Eli and the issue of religious fanaticism.  While the film did not include any of the politics, it focused in on the religious fervor of the time.  Eli Sunday (Paul's brother) is a preacher and 'healer' that the community follows and embraces.  In the novel however, he is portrayed as a Jim Bakker type, a man who sought celebrity with religion.  In the novel, Eli was financed/created by those with deep pockets.  'One of these disciples was an eminent judge, and another was a proprietor of a chain of grocery stores: their wives had taken Eli in hand and rubbed off the rough spots and improved his grammar...also they had taught him where to get his clothes and how to hold a knife and fork, so that Eli was becoming a social success...One evening they all went to see Eli; in a great tent such as would hold a three ring circus, with thousands of cars parked in the fields about.'  While this character in the novel creates his own religion and becomes a national celebrity, the film version of Eli operates on a much smaller scale.  Unfortunately, in the film, Eli does not fare nearly as well as he does in the novel and materializes in the last scene of the film, visiting Plainview in his opulent mansion, begging for money.

The ending of the film is spectacular!  We see the man that Daniel Plainview has become - wealthy, lonely, angry, and vindictive.  The entire film is stunning - the look is gritty and real and very well researched.  Anderson was very concerned with the accuracy of the end result and if you watch the special features on the double disc version of this movie, it is remarkable how he was able to take old photographs and recreate them on film.  Little Boston was filmed in rural Texas, but the last few scenes were filmed inside Greystone Mansion which was the residence that Edward Doheny, Sr. built for Edward Doheny, Jr.  This is one of my favorite places in the world and I plan on a future tie-in post on this property in the future.  The choice of this setting reiterates the fact that Doheny was a major influence of both the Dad character in the novel and the Plainview character in the film.  This is my dream house, so pay close attention when you watch this film.  The very last scene takes place in the underground bowling alley.  In all the filming that has been done in and around the mansion for films, television, and music videos (here is a partial list of the films), this was the first time that the bowling alley had ever utilized; and we can thank Anderson for its full restoration.  It is in this bowling alley that the most iconic scene of the film takes place - it is here that Eli asks Plainview for money and Daniel Day Lewis' performance is pure brilliance.  I won't show you the VERY end of the film, but after Plainview humiliates Eli and forces him to profess that he is a false prophet, he gloats that he's been able to siphon the oil from land adjacent to his...and then the iconic milkshake line is delivered.


This film was nominated for eight Oscars including Best Picture, which it did not win, but Daniel Day Lewis won for Best Actor and Robert Elswit won for Best Cinematography.  It truly is a phenomenal film and if you did not enjoy it the first time around, I would definitely suggest you give it another try!

What did you think, Lovelies?  Did you enjoy the film as a whole or perhaps just the phenomenal performance that Daniel Day Lewis gave?  I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Happy Viewing!!
XOXO

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Bates Motel - Episode 6 Reveal

Good Evening Lovelies!

Have you been watching Bates Motel on A&E?  I watched the first two episodes and then my TV went on the fritz, so I watched the next three episodes online.  My downstairs neighbor (my new best friend) fixed the TV on Sunday night, so I was able to watch the sixth episode last night on the big screen...and I'm so grateful that I was able to, since Episode 6 was fantastic!!

One of my best ladies had a huge issue at the beginning of the series with the fact that this story was being told in a contemporary setting, but I was rather excited about it myself.  She has come around since it has a vintage feel despite not being a period drama.  It may not be period, but the show is definitely dramatic!  For those of you who watched it - HOLY MOLY that was probably the most exciting premiere I've ever seen!!!  The fact that it quickly became about so much more than just the creepy relationship between a boy and his mother is also exciting.

If you haven't been watching, you can catch up with full episodes on the A&E Website.  And I suggest you do so, stat!  I also suggest you stop reading now!

***SPOILER ALERT***


The last few episodes have let the Officer Shelby story line take precedence over the Norman/Norma story line.  I was not thrilled about that.  Episode 6 brought some closure to that whole fiasco and shifted the focus back to Norman which is really why we all started watching in the first place.  When I watched the series premiere, I couldn't decide whether Norman hallucinated finding his father in the basement or if he was the one who had actually killed him.  Norma was simply too obvious a choice.  While she clearly has MANY issues, I didn't think she was responsible for that situation.  When Norman blacked out and ended up in the hospital in Episode 3, I think it was clear to everyone from Norma's conversation with the doctor that this was not the first time that had happened.  We then got another hint in Episode 5 when Norman did not seem to remember attacking Dylan.  So when Norman attacked Officer Shelby and then become catatonic and it was revealed that he was responsible for his father's death, I felt vindicated - I KNEW IT!!

Our poor little smothered Norman - we may not be able to blame his mother for all his problems after all... this reveal allows us to cut Norma a little slack.  After that revelation, she shifted very quickly from a completely crazy, incredibly creepy, evil woman who smothers her son, to a slightly less crazy woman whose motivation is protecting her son at all costs.  This was a turning point in our story and I'm VERY excited to see where this season will go!

There have been so many versions of the Norman Bates character throughout the years (in books, movies, and television) but if we want to stick with the most iconic version - Anthony Perkins' portrayal in the Hitchcock classic, we really know very little about him and his situation and we only know for sure that Norman goes on to kill once in adulthood.  There are many incarnations of Norman Bates, so Bates Motel has a lot of room to play with the mythology of this fascinating character.

So Lovelies, are you watching?  What do you think?  Do you think it's as brilliant as I do??

Saturday, April 20, 2013

Oil! - Book Club Meeting - FINALLY!

Oil!

Upton Sinclair, 1927


Hello there Ladies and Gents!  Welcome to the third meeting of The Vintage Project Book Club.  I'm not sure if anyone else started reading this novel - or if anyone finished it because, honestly, I suffered through this one.  And it's times like these that I wish I could blame someone else for the book selection, but alas, I only have myself to blame.  Oil! is dense - incredibly dense - and I did NOT love it.

I understand what Sinclair wanted to do with this work - he wanted to write a novel which functioned as social commentary on greed and a shifting of values and ideas.  Unfortunately, the descriptor of "A classic tale of greed and corruption." on the back cover is rather misleading.  Greed and corruption, I felt were merely peripheral.  It felt like Sinclair's focus was on how generations and classes were pitted against one another as global ideals began to shift in the 1920's...yes mostly because of capitalism, but the focus is more on the struggle itself.


This clashing of the ideals of capitalism, socialism, and communism is further complicated by the relationship between James Arnold Ross, Sr. (Dad) and James Arnold Ross, Jr. (Bunny) and also between Bunny and his friends.  While the novel is written in the third person, it is Bunny's narrative - we see him grow up, see the incredibly close relationship with his father, his attempts to make peace with the oil business that Dad had built, and trying to reconcile that with the plight of the working class and the new ideas that The Bolshevik Revolution and WWI had brought to the social consciousness.  This is an interesting concept, but the novel is far too dense and far too long (548 pages), and I felt like Sinclair was daring me to give up towards the end.  It is far more interesting to talk about this work than to actually read it.  So, let's talk about it.

The story begins with a road trip to visit one of Dad's wells when Bunny is only thirteen and we quickly learn a lot about Dad's character and Bunny's adoration of him.  'For the most part you sat silent and dignified - because that was Dad's way, and Dad's way constituted the ethics of motoring...There was no hat on Dad's head, because he believed that wind and sunshine kept your hair from falling out...Fifty miles, said the speedometer; that was Dad's rule for open country, and he never varied it, except in wet weather...Fifty miles was enough said Dad; he was a man of order...'  Dad begins the novel as a very stern character, a trait that was largely responsible for his rise from mule-driver to self-made oil baron.  'Clothing was a part of a man's dignity, a symbol of his rise in life, and never to be soiled or crumpled...he liked to talk with the plain sort of folks he met along the road, folks of his own sort, who did not notice his extremely crude English; folks who weren't trying to get any money out of him - at least not enough to matter...he went about with a supply of silver dollars and half dollars jingling in his pocket, so that all whom he had dealings with might share that spiritual wealth. "Poor devils," he would say, "they don't get much." He knew because he had been one of them, and he never lost an opportunity to explain it to the boy. To him it was real, and to the boy it was romantic.'  And this is the fundamental difference between these two characters.  Bunny is a compassionate romantic who never had to struggle for anything and Dad is a realist who struggled for everything.  It was this struggle that made him incredibly compassionate towards his workers.  '[the workers] respected this "old man," because he knew his business, and nobody could fool him. Also, they liked him because he combined a proper amount of kindliness with his sternness; he was simple and unpretentious...he was a "real guy"; and with this he combined the glamour of a million dollars.'

We quickly realize the fact that he loves Bunny with everything he has and is willing to do whatever he can to make him happy.  Originally, he thought that to provide a life with financial stability and a thriving business to inherit would be enough, but as Bunny gets older, Dad has to make peace with the fact that Bunny was definitely not an oil man.  On the trip which opens the novel, Bunny meets a boy named Paul who, over time, supercedes Dad in his influence of Bunny.  Bunny has a strong sense of right and wrong, but Paul opens his eyes to things he'd never seen or even had to think about with his privileged upbringing - instilling a sense of fairness and truth that go way beyond the code that most people live by.  It is under Paul's influence and the influence of the university that he later attends that Bunny really starts to see the way that Dad does business.  While Dad had established himself and done incredibly well, he was still new in the oil game and definitely considered one of the little guys.  To work his way up, Dad had to play by the same rules as the big boys.  'It was the difference between a theoretical and a practical view of the question. The lady teacher had never had to drill an oil well, her business didn't depend on moving heavy materials over a sheep trail; all she did was jist to sit in a room and use high-soundin' words, like "ideals" and "democracy" and "public service". That was the trouble with this education business,  the people that taught was people that never done things, and had no real knowledge of the world...if you wanted things done, you had to pay for them.'  It is only after Bunny sees Dad bribe a city official for the first time that we really start to see a shift.  'The father kept two compartments in his mind, one for the things that were right, and the other for things that existed, and which you had to allow to exist, and to defend, in a queer, half-hearted, but stubborn way. But here was this new phenomenon, a boy's mind which was all one compartment; things ought to be right, and if they were not right, you ought to make them right, or else what was the use of having any right - you were only fooling yourself about it.'

Along with this shift of consciousness, the first Oil Worker's Strike took place which would have caused a much greater rift between Dad and Bunny if Dad wasn't so good to his workers - allowing them to stay in the cabins he'd built for them and their families to live in while drilling and treating them FAR better than the other oil companies treated their men.  'He was losing a fortune everyday, and at the same time losing caste with his associates, who thought he was either crack-brained or a traitor, they could not make out which...'  This was the first time Bunny had seen anyone challenge the status-quo and Bunny's support of the men in the strike instead of his father is simply foreshadowing his views on the war and how things should be.  'It was springtime all over the country, and yet everybody was preparing to go to war, and form vast armies, and kill other people, also groping for happiness! Everybody said that it had to be; and yet something in Bunny would not cease to dream of a world in which people didn't maim and kill one another, and destroy, not merely the happiness of others, but their own...Bunny was an "idealist," and such people are seldom satisfied in this harsh world.'  Paul, having great influence over Bunny, explained the side of the oil workers during the strike and also explained how things really were once he returned from war.  Paul had seen things and been forced to do things while stationed in Siberia that Bunny could hardly fathom.  '"...I tell you, Bunny, if the private soldiers could have talked it over, there wouldn't have been any war. But that is what is known as treason, and if you try it, you're shot."'  Through Paul, Bunny adopts socialist views and begins attending meetings only to realize that, due to his social standing, he does not truly belong.  'Bunny felt the thrill of a great mass experience, and yearned to be part of it, and then shrunk back, like the young man in the Bible story that has too many possessions.'

While Bunny was not the usual sort of Socialist, he threw himself into it wholeheartedly.  Between Paul and one of his professors, Mr. Irving, he was absorbing as much information as he could.  'Thereupon Mr. Irving gave him the names of two weekly magazines which as it happened, had just been excluded from the library of the university, and from all the high schools of Angel City, for "dangerous thoughts". You can imagine what happened then. When you tell a high-spirited lad that he must not read certain publications, he becomes immediately filled with curiosity to know what they contain. Bunny went home and sent in his subscription to those papers, quite openly in his own name. So there was another entry in the card-indexes of the Military Intelligence Department and the Naval Intelligence Department and the Secret Service Department; to say nothing of many organizations which were using these card-indexes as their own - several patriotic societies, and several militant newspapers, and several big private detective agencies, including of course, the information service of the once-upon-a-time ambassador from a no-longer existing Russian government.'  While early on, Bunny saw his privileged upbringing somewhat of an embarrassment in the company of other Socialists, it later brought him his fair share of fame.  '"The millionaire red" became his future designation...Bunny was made into a centre of Solviet propaganda...Rachel insisted that Bunny was one person in a million capable of believing what was contrary to his economic interests.'  As the situation became more heated and more of his Socialist and Communist friends started to get arrested for crimes against capitalism or as they are referred to in the novel, criminal syndicalism, he begins to use Dad's money to bail them all out of jail time and time again.  This shows the level of compassion that Dad is capable of - while these new views also went against his personal interests, he was always willing to listen to his son, the views of his friends, and even went to a few Socialist meetings with Bunny.  Because it was what made Bunny happy, Dad also continually gave him as much money as he needed to bail out his friends, to create propaganda publications, and even starting colleges for the working class.  '"...it's going to be kind of tough on me if I'm to spend my life earning money, and then you spend it teaching young people that I haven't got any right to it!"'

While Bunny was funding this new movement, Dad was trying to get ahead in the oil game by donating an obscene amount of money with his business partner to help get Senator Harding elected to the White House.  This happens late in the novel and by this time, we've already come to know Dad very well...up until this point, we'd only seen him bribe local officials in order to expedite roads and the construction of wells, never anything that could come close to this type of corruption, so with the fact that his business partner, Verne, came to him to solicit this money, I don't think Dad would have started 'buying' politicians on his own.  Verne is a shrewd and pompous businessman and knew what he was doing - obviously, since Harding won the presidency, and in greasing this palm in particular, they were getting a President interested in oil, a cooperative Secretary of the Interior, and the contracts on government oil land that they could drill and then sell the oil back to the government.  Everything was going very well for Dad and Verne until President Harding died and a new Congress was elected.  It was then that the news of these dealings broke and flooded the newspapers.  '...the thing was too sensational to be held down any longer. It didn't read like politics, but like some blood and thunder movie.'

This novel is (supposedly loosely) based on the life of Edward L. Doheny, Sr., his oil company Pan American, and his involvement in the Teapot Dome Scandal.  While Sinclair went on the record to state that James Arnold Ross, Sr. is not based on any one person, the similarities in character, life, and business are too many to ignore.  This is the thinly masked story of Doheny who drilled the first successful oil well in a field just north of Downtown Los Angeles and set off the oil boom of Southern California in the late 1800's.  I admit that, while I am more knowledgeable about the Doheny family than most, I am by no means an expert, but I will be doing my research and create another post about Doheny and the specific parallels between this novel and the Doheny family, which should be quite a read - the story of that family is more sordid and scandalous, glamorous and tragic than most people could create in their imaginations!

As dense as this post is, it is nothing compared to the novel, I have neglected whole story lines and a myriad of characters in the interest of focusing on what I felt constituted the main message that Sinclair wanted to convey.  He was very passionate about his hatred of capitalism and this is his manifesto.

For those of you who have read this, what did you think?  Am I being unfairly harsh?  Are you proud of me for not defenestrating this book?

I hope I can make up for this novel with my April Book Club Selection!
Happy Reading!!