Unanswered Question

The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is 'What does a woman want?'

Sigmund Freud

On Psychology

As Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung sailed into New York harbor, a large group of admirers awaited them at the pier to greet the creators of modern psychologogy. Watching the cheering crowd from the ship's railing, Freud reputedly said to Jung: "Don't they know we are bringing them the plague?"

Correction

Gentleman: What you write about my sister and me is all nonsense. I'm not reading Blox, I don't even know what that is, I'm half-blind and have better things to do. My assistant, Emma Lazarus, found your stupid remarks on my late sister's relationship with me. It was all the other way round. Joan envied me all her life. All she achieved she owes to me. She always felt second class, and she was. That's why she played the part of "I" in Rebecca so well. She did not have to act "to be not good enough". And because she always looked at me with a suspicious mind, she did not have to act in Suspicion either. And why should I grudge her dying first? I'm the older one, and I survived her. No small achievement. Apart from all that we were loving sisters.

Perennial Feud

Once upon a time there were two ambitious sisters , named Olivia and Joan. They were British with royal blood. Their father was an attorney in Japan, and both were born in Tokyo. After their mother learned of the father’s affair with his Japanese maid, she whisked them to California. Still teenagers they decided to become movie stars. While Olivia, the older one, soon made a splash in earlie talkie Hollywood, Joan struggled in small roles. Over and over again she saw her older sister get the roles she had auditioned and hoped for. Despairing of ever making it, Joan curled up in bed to read a new best-seller called Rebecca and instantly saw herself in the put-upon heroine struggling against a powerful (if dead) rival. The next night she happened to find herself at a dinner party seated next to producer David O. Selznick. No writer had plotted this, it was sheer fate. She told Selznick how much she liked the novel, and he told her that he had just bought the rights and was preparing a screen version. Joan tested for the lead role but had little hope to get the part.  Again her sister also auditioned, and she was already an established star. Against all odds Joan made it this time.  Rebecca became her first big hit. She returned to director Alfred Hitchcock for another blockbuster hit movie, Suspicion, and was nominated for Best Actress. So was Olivia, for Hold Back the Dawn. Joan, only 24 then, took home the Oscar, becoming the youngest best-actress winner at the time. Olivia never forgave her.

Yesterday I learned that Joan Fontaine, one of the last remaining links to Hollywood’s golden age of the 1930s and ’40s, has died at age 96. She is survived by her sister, Olivia de Havilland. The sisterly feud never ended. “I married first," Joan purportedly said, "I won the Oscar before Olivia did, and if I die first, she’ll undoubtedly be livid because I beat her to it!"

Making Mistakes

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

George Bernard Shaw

Only Nine More Days!

My Book Of The Year

I'm not sure whether the rankings made at the year's end are always fair. Many just seem to state the well-known trends of fashion and public approval, some serve the image of the people who decide what's praise-worthy. I do agree, though, that The Sleepwalkers
 How Europe Went to War in 1914
 by Christopher Clark is one of the best books of 2013 as The New York Times declares this weekend. A good friend gave Clark's book to me a few weeks ago, and I devoured it in one go. It is well-written, profound and gives in a single volume a comprehensive survey of the events leading up to World War I. Christopher Clark shows that the participants stumbled like “sleepwalkers” into that tragedy. “The outbreak of war,” Clark writes, “is not an Agatha Christie drama at the end of which we will discover the culprit standing over a corpse.”
I do realize that within three days this is the second book I praise. Blame it on the upcoming holidays when we all will have more than the usual time to read.

Talent Needs Change

“A man of ordinary talent will always be ordinary, whether he travels or not; but a man of superior talent (which I cannot deny myself to be without being impious) will go to pieces if he remains forever in the same place.”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Voltaire In Love

I just came across a wonderful book, Nancy Mitford's Voltaire in Love. First published in the 1960's it's almost a classic by now, but still very readable for someone interested in history, philosophy and gossip. It tells the unique love story of François-Marie Arouet, who himself as "Voltaire", and Emelie, Marquise du Châtelet. She was a married woman, eleven years younger than Voltaire, living the life of an upper class Parisian woman of society. Their affair was of course considered inappropriate, but they ignored the rules of acceptable conduct, went to the opera, dined at the most respectable inns, and even appeared together in the audience chamber of the King. Eventually they decided to live at the Chateau of Emilie's husband. Voltaire loaned the Marquis 40,000 francs at low interest to pay for the renovation and bought him a home in the country where he could hunt. Voltaire was a wealthy man; they wanted for nothing, and lived in luxury. He and Emilie collected a library of 21,000 books. Time was spent reading, analyzing, and discussing the work of many writers to determine what they believed was the truth on many subjects. The lovers obviously had similar values and supported each other's intellectual goals and achievements. Nevertheless they fought often and intensely. After Emilie's death in 1749, Voltaire wrote to a friend:"It is not a mistress I have lost but half of myself, a soul for which my soul seems to have been made."

On Fame

"For, as Cicero says, even those who argue against fame still want the books they write against it to bear their name in the title and hope to become famous for despising fame. Everything else is subject to barter: we will let our friends have our goods and our lives if need be; but a case of sharing of fame and making someone else the gift of our reputation is hardly to be found."

Michel de Montaigne