Reading Journal Chapter 3

 

In the weeks after my first foray into Harry Potter, I read among other things, the first Count St. Germain book, Hotel Transylvania.  While perhaps not as famous as the works of Ann Rice, Yarbro’s series of the Count Saint Germain (and it’s spin off shorter series about Oliva) is the longest running vampire series in publication.  While the first in the series, Hotel Transylvania was not the first one in the series I had read.  That was an Olivia novel, so in many ways, while Madeline came first, Olivia to me is always the better character.

               In part it is because of how Madeline is portrayed here.  While it is understandable that she wishes to leave her father, considering what his plans for her entailed, one wonders at the coldness she seems to feel the rest of her family who would be mourning her death.  In part, this book is a product of its time – the  rich or aristocrat girl being forced into something she does not want was and still is a plot device in many books.  But Madeline lacks the introspection that makes the Count interesting.  She lacks or seems to lack the ability to think beyond her needs.  It is hardly surprising that Olivia gets her own series but Madeline does not.

               But dislike or uninterest despite the entry claiming disinterest in Madeline is because, rightly or wrongly, I saw her as taking Olivia’s place.  She didn’t, not really; she premiered first after al, but it does illustrate how favoritism in treading can work.  I read Olivia first, so she’s better.   But a review of the journals show a good about of reading and reareading the Count’s series. 

               Perception and remembrance is sketchy.  Part of this is what we are taught.  In 2009, Adichie gave a Ted Talk about the power of a single story, and if you haven’t seen it, you should.  Adichie’s talk is about how a single narrative – say the European narrative of Africa-  can affect and determine how people see things.  That this occurs not only on a global scale but also on a local one.  In part, the talk is a impetus to read widely and read well.  To read European literature but also African literature, Sout h American, Asian.  To get as multiple stories as you can  - not just the standard white story of the founding of America, but the story told be Native Americans/First Nations/Inuit.  I found myself thinking of that lecture while looking over the remarks and notes I made while reading Son of Oscar Wilde by Vyvyan Holland.  The story of Wilde, of Oscar, is one that is usually, and rightly, told of a man prosectuteed for being homosexual and sometimes, though not always, a man that loses his sense as he falls in love with a much younger man.  The folooy of the lawsuit brought against Bosie’s father and the resulting criminal trial that led to Wilde’s imprisonment are told and retold.  As they  should be.  But what should also be told and retold, what should also be made clear is the price that Wilde’s family paid.  It’s true that Wilde lost contact with his sons.  But his sons also lost contact with their father.  They lost their mother before time to.  They lost home, they saw their toys and books aunctioned off.  They lost their name.  Constance Wilde changed back to Holland after the trial, in part because the family could not stay places because of the scandal surrounding the Wilde name.  They were once kicked out of a hotel in the middle of the night.

                

               What Holland’s memoir does is showcase the cost of the scandal not to Oscar, but to what would be collateral damage.  Constance and the children went to Europe (where she was once thrown out of a hotel because of her connection to Wilde) and the book functions also as part travel remembrance, perhaps the strangest is his description of telegraph polls, “But most disturbing of all were the telegraph poles.  Being used to the straight, orderly ones in England, the crooked French variety filled me with terror; I saw them as live creatures, snakes writhing out of the ground, and swaying too and for, seeking something to devour’ (55). 

               And, he also takes a dim view of the Germans.  Not surprising since the memoir was published after the First World War where his brother Cyril was killed by a German sniper. He calls them “sheep, herded and bullied by their overlords, who like sheep-dogs, marshalled them and kept them in order.  We [the Wilde children], however, as freedom loving Irishmen, resented this regimentation and dug in our toes against it” (77).