Harriet Lane Levy (1867–1950)

You know why I picked this book up? The address. San Francisco isn't on my life-list of places to love, but it's very interesting. And, I found out after reading this dull, dull, dull book that Levy knew Alice B. Toklas! Even lived with her in Paris.

Hmmm...never married, knew lesbians...hmmm

None of that makes her in the least bit interesting, I fear. Her childhood in 1870s San Francisco was pretty much what you'd expect. I could scarcely keep my eyes open for much of the book. Her writing style is very much of the period of her youth, and in fact the book reads like the stilted, uninformative letters home that I've read in many a Collected Letters book about figures of that age.

The book, the only one she ever published, was brought out in 1947 when she was eighty years old. Frankly, for that reason alone, I think it deserves some place in our cultural memory...she was an old, old woman by the standards of that day, and she was Jewish, and she was *ahem* unmarried, so she was a very, very different sort of a person. Good! Yes, publishers, good to bring out alternative voices!

Ye gods, I don't want to read this kind of bludgeoningly boring book ever, ever again.… (mehr)