This week I’ve been rereading Possession, which is up there with Middlemarch for great novels to read when you’re snarled, low and the sleeves of your cardigan are stuffed with Kleenex (suck it, ragweed season). I’ve been reading Madwoman in the Attic, too, and Byatt’s novel makes a satisfying counterpoint.
The New York Times has a nice page devoted to A.S. Byatt, which includes these tidbits:
• When the book became an unlikely bestseller in the United States, in the winter of 1990, Byatt was asked to speculate on the reason for its popularity. She responded, “It’s like the books people used to enjoy reading when they enjoyed reading … It has a universal plot, a classic romantic plot and a classic detective plot. And the plot was more important than anything else in it. People can get the sort of pleasure out of it they got out of the old romantic novel.”
• In another interview, Byatt described the spark for the novel:

Sometime in the early 1970’s, Ms. Byatt recalled, she spotted a well-known Coleridge scholar in the British Museum Library and mused that much of what she knew of Coleridge had been filtered through that individual, who had devoted a lifetime to her study of the Romantic poet. ”I thought, it’s almost like a case of demonic possession, and I wondered – has she eaten up his life or has he eaten up hers?”

• Also worth a read, this lengthy but fascinating interview with Éditions Paradigme. In it, Byatt notes, “I think there are a lot of rather romantic novels rather like Possession that believe themselves to be influenced by Possession and rather depress me,” which made me laugh.
RELATED:
• Byatt’s ode to Middlemarch.

• Maud points to Richard Grayson’s great account of Junot Díaz’s reading in NYC last week. (Especially interesting to me were Díaz’s concluding remarks about the compassion necessary to write characters unlike yourself.)
• Best American [Literary Baka Baka] news: An excerpt from DFW’s 5,000-word introduction to Best American Essays 2007, and advance word on the table of contents for this year’s Best American Short Stories, guest-edited by Stephen King, and the stories making the “100 other” notables list. (Warm congrats to Christopher Rowe and Matt Cheney for their inclusion.) Both anthologies are due out in October. (First link via Paper Cuts.)
• I am entranced by the idea of this bacon candy bar.

Today the dog is having her teeth cleaned. She is a tiny thing, and we’ve been quaking all week about having her put under anesthesia. I tend to bring up dogs like I myself was raised — matted but coddled — and days like this I wish I were a better, more regular steward.
Last night she received a walk, a bath, treats and a half-hour of her favorite game, Bungalow Ball, and this morning we — Mr. Tingle, me and the dog — rolled into the animal hospital parking lot at an early hour. We were brought to an examination room for weigh-in (4.4 pounds) and a pre-cleaning consultation with the vet. In the past this has always been a perfunctory little exchange that concludes in a flourish of waiver-signing. Not this morning. A vet we’ve never met before came springing into the room and embarked on what has to have been the longest lecture ever given on the topic of canine dental hygiene. Forty minutes! As my husband said later, “I knew we were in trouble as soon as he drew the diagram of the wolf jaw.”
The lecture was in the grand sermon style, expertly alternating between sounding the notes of terror (abscesses! fractures!) and comfort (x-rays! newest monitoring technology!). Overall it seemed less educational than designed to make us feel kindly disposed toward whatever bill we’re presented with later today.
Comparing notes on the ride home, Mr. Tingle said the experience had reminded him of sitting in a Baptist church. For me it had been like the scene in Jane Eyre where young Jane is lectured by Mr. Brocklehurst, the superintendent of Lowood, on the importance of reading Psalms. At one point, the vet was telling us about the holiest of holy dogs, a golden retriever who waits in the hallway each evening for its owner to brush and floss its teeth, and all I could think of was this exchange:

“And the Psalms? I hope you like them?”
“No, sir.”
“No? oh shocking! I have a little boy, younger than you, who knows six Psalms by heart: and when you ask him which he would rather have, a ginger-bread nut to eat, or a verse of a Psalm to learn he says: ‘Oh! The verse of a Psalm! angels sing Psalms;’ says he, ‘I wish to be a little angel here below;’ he then gets two nuts in recompense for his infant piety.”
“Psalms are not interesting,” I remarked.

• Aura Estrada on novels by César Aira and Roberto Bolaño. (via Three Percent.)
• Imaginary trip: Culzean Castle, where the pond holds eels and swans and the staff is neither “grumpy nor jobsworthy .”

• The Paris Review interview with Henry Green (PDF for download).
• Phrase of the day: A “self-righteous Avril Sévigné .” (via Lit Saloon.)

After some searching, Gawker editor Choire Sicha uncovers what he believes to be The New York Times‘ first full story on the World Trade Center attacks.

Sorry for the dust here. Terry has his cold, OGIC has been entertaining, and last night was my first jazz class. It was wonderful, and I spent the rest of the night in an elated state working on the little routine we learned which, if I can get it super spruce, may be my ticket to Broadway. Fingers crossed.
Seriously, the class was great. My two things to work on for next time are to stop trying to insert relevés everywhere (ballet you go up, jazz you stay down) and to stop giggling every time someone either says or demonstrates “jazz hands.” The instructor was nice about it, but it’s clearly going to be a liability if I can’t get over it.
I have to tap away at the book for a few hours, but more soon. In the meanwhile, here’s my favorite pop culture invocation of jazz hands from the summer (goodness begins around the 1:30 mark; warning: it’s from a show that makes some people’s souls bleed).

• Reading list from Lawrence Weschler’s Literary Nonfiction class at NYU.
• The online bookstore of the Museum of Jurassic Technology in L.A. (subject of Weschler’s excellent Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder).