The Reader and the Writer

“It’s delightful when your imaginations come true, isn’t it?
But the worst of imagining things is that the time comes when you have to stop and that hurts.
When the Lord puts us in certain circumstances He doesn’t mean for us to imagine them away.

Welcome to our first conversation on Anne of Green Gables! In this episode, Shari and Rhea can’t get enough of Anne with an ‘e’. They share their favorite moments, favorite quotes, favorite things this story make them think about, and their favorite things about Anne, which, of course, is everything! They wonder what it takes for a wide scope of imagination. They ask if we treat our own imaginations well in this day and age, and what would it look like to cherish our imaginations? They talk about the connection between imagination and beauty, and how Anne sees beauty in everything but herself. They talk about naming, and wonder if Anne’s naming of places and objects transfigures them—not only for herself, but for those around her as well. Also, they ask one another the hardest question ever: Which would you rather be if you had the choice: divinely beautiful, dazzling clever, or angelically good??
Look for the Rhea’s reading guide for Anne of Green Gables to publish on her Substack page, soon!
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Welcome back to Middlemarch! In this episode, Shari and Rhea think long and hard about our narrator: by what tactics is she (he?) getting us to see? Where are our eyes turned? On what do we gaze? And how does this gaze serve Eliot’s purposes for expressing her greater themes? They also talk about the symmetry in the story lines of Book Three, and the elegant arc they make. Of course, they discuss details: Fred Vincy’s extreme self-centerdness, Lydgate’s dunce-headedness, and poor Dorthea’s hopes of matrimonial bliss being popped so soon. They argue over passionately discuss whether Rosamond is manipulative or innocent in her pursuit of Lydgate. They bring up that tricky narrator again, and how we are given the turn in their relationship: from careless flirting to holy matrimony. They continue to scratch their heads over the British class system and where exactly every person and trade fits in. And furniture… What is up with this continual mention of furniture?? Finally, they take in the title of Book Three, Waiting to Die, and consider the full scope of its meaning.
Show Notes:
What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew, by Daniel Pool. (Rhea referenced)
R&W Outline for Middlemarch, Book Three (Available for a limited time to all subscribers. Will go behind paywall mid-year). Great for use with:
* Personal Study
* Book Groups
* Homeschool Supplement
* Upper Level High School Curriculum Supplement

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“Survival, it is called. Often it is accidental, sometimes it is engineered by creatures or forces that we have no conception of, always it is temporary.” —p. 324

Welcome back to Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner. In this episode, Shari and Rhea find themselves without words… more than once…! They talk about Charity’s way of controlling everything to the very end, and how still after all that, they couldn’t dislike her, or harbor ill feelings toward her. They talk about Sid and Larry’s simultaneous “journeys” they took at the end, and how each one came out on the other side. They talk about dying “right” v. dying “well,” living “right” v. living “well,” and how the two inform one another. They talk about fate, forgiveness, and the way suffering has the mysterious gift of enlarging us if we’ll let it. Finally, Shari declares Crossing to Safety as one of her top five books of all time—a statement that, if you’ve been listening to R&W for any length of time, you know she doesn’t make easily.
Below is The Resurrection by Piero della Francesca that was mentioned multiple times in the narrative and acted as a critical image in the last section of the story.
Our next book is Anne of Green Gables, by L.M. Montgomery. Our first episode of that four-part series will air April 14th.
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“Order is indeed the dream of man, but chaos, which is only another word for dumb, blind, witless chance, is still the law of nature.” (p. 191)

Welcome back to Crossing to Safety, by Wallace Stegner. In this episode, Shari and Rhea talk (somewhat obsessively) about Charity Lang and her extreme need to control, and how it affects, well, everything! They talk more about Larry, the long-view narrator, the various narrative techniques Stegner uses through him, and how it continues to impact our understanding of Charity, Larry, both marriages, and the friendship at the heart of this story. They talk about the farce of control itself—how very little we actually have—what makes a person decide he or she has “no choice” but to sacrifice for the sake of another, and what it looks like to bend and not break. Oh, and they talk about the continual Eden imagery: Adam and Eve, and that damnable lurking snake.
Next week will be their fourth and final episode with Crossing to Safety.
Show note:
Here is the quote Shari was talking about from Madeleine L’Engle’s book, Walking on Water (in reference to bringing order from chaos):
Leonard Bernstein tells me more than the dictionary when he says that for him music is cosmos in chaos. That has the ring of truth in my ears and sparks my creative imagination. And it is true not only of music; all art is cosmos, cosmos found within chaos. At least all Christian art (by which I mean all true art, and I’ll go deeper into this later) is cosmos in chaos.
—Madeleine L’Engle (p. 8)

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And so, by circuitous and unpredictable routes, we converge toward midcontinent and meet in Madison, and are at once drawn together, braided and plaited into a friendship. (p. 96)

Welcome back to Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner. In this episode, Shari and Rhea continue their discussion of the long-view narrative style of the story’s first person narrator, Larry Morgan. They discuss his generous story telling style, his telling of deep intimacies, and the way they find themselves, at times, so overcome by the quiet beauty of the narrative they could weep. They continue to relate Larry and Sally’s story to their own marriages, and their own younger-self lives. They discuss Larry’s imagined historical telling of Sid and Charity’s meeting and early love: what more is revealed about Larry the narrator, and what Stegner the author gains by this creative narrative technique. They discuss Charity in-depth: her name, its meaning, and how Stegner, through his narrator, is training us in the way of true, charitable and lasting love. They talk about C. S. Lewis. Shari comes up with a fitting Hamilton quote about Sid.
In their next episode, they will be reading through the end of Book One (pp. 142-239)
Here’s a link to Rhea’s excellent reading guide for Crossing to Safety:
Here is the poem by Robert Frost that inspired the story’s title:
I Could Give All To Time by Robert Frost
To Time it never seems that he is braveTo set himself against the peaks of snowTo lay them level with the running wave,Nor is he overjoyed when they lie low,But only grave, contemplative and grave.
What now is inland shall be ocean isle,Then eddies playing round a sunken reefLike the curl at the corner of a smile;And I could share Time’s lack of joy or griefAt such a planetary change of style.
I could give all to Time except – exceptWhat I myself have held. But why declareThe things forbidden that while the Customs sleptI have crossed to Safety with? For I am There,And what I would not part with I have kept.

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