Saturday Nights with Edith Wharton

I had the great delight of hosting a friend over the weekend. We knew each other throughout college, lived down the hall from one another, and constantly figured in the other's socializing--but somehow, the two of us never grew close. That's what happens when you move within a circle of mutual friends for years.

Well, by Sunday, we agreed that our friendship had grown startlingly stronger. And I'll wager that this happiness is, in part, due to Edith Wharton.

I've had a copy of The House of Mirth on my shelves for years. I had picked it up on the cheap, certain I wanted to read it eventually, but 'eventually' never came to be now. So there it sat.

On Saturday afternoon, as Friend and I lazed around, he took it from my shelf and began reading. I was reading something else, and so we lazed--vocally. Friend piped up with thoughts on the life of Miss Lily Bart, or asking about a word that neither of us knew, that demanded look-up. And it didn't take long before us two twenty-somethings laid out our Saturday night plans in the city: Go to a bookstore, find another copy of The House of Mirth, and read it together til closing at 11 p.m.

I tell you, it was fraught; this is a great book that I viscerally responded to. So engrossing is the tale of Lily Bart and New York society at turn of the twentieth century, we ended up bringing that second copy home and continuing to read til 3 a.m (there was a short spaghetti break). And beyond pausing to puzzle about word definitions, we exchanged passionate analysis about Lily's plight--and drew personal connections. It was Wharton's novel that provided the triggers for Friend and I to share our own stories; Lily's life suffocated by social rituals, the rule of money, the business side of love, appearances and family led us to start talking about how our own lives are affected by the same. So, while the reading went on for a startling eight-ish hours, the conversation went well into dawn.

And so, not only am I grateful for a novel that's captured my attention (thoughts on the opinionated narrator, scene pacing, and how the reader is instructed to position herself another time), but I'm grateful that spending my Saturday evening reading opened out a deeper friendship.

Oh, Edith, will your gifts never cease?

Comments

[the david]

i would only add that we chanced upon Mirth following a "desultory" perusing of your collection :)