a wee bit of reflection on reading the Depression

I was a nerdy child. No surprise, then, that I’ve become a nerdy adult. I was thinking just now of a summer I spent in an academic program at Quabbin called S.P.U.R.T. Got me if I remember what it stood for… but I remember spending that last summer before junior high doing a research project on the Great Depression. For fun.

Well… I was curious about that point in our history. A strange thing for a soon to be twelve-year-old to find fascination with in 1987. Then again, I had little concept of how vast a project that would be… and… it didn’t have poodle skirts and bee-bop like my previous favorite decade did… so the American history of the 1930’s faded into disinterest after that.

I picked up the decade again when Anglophilia leached into my sentiments. The decade between the Great Wars that brought Evelyn Waugh, the Mitford Sisters, and Noel Coward. Swanky cocktail parties, cigarette holders, and sultry jazz singers. But… this side of the ocean… unless it was a smoky black and white film with soft lighting on Bette Davis’s eyes… forget it.

Then a month ago, I was subverted by HBO’s programming and picked up a James Cain novel for the first time in my life. I have seen Mildred Pierce many times in my fascination with Joan Crawford. But… that was part of that glamourized fabrication presented by Hollywood. It wasn’t real or gritty… or having anything to do with the Great Depression at all.

And then… all of a sudden… this first quarter of the 21st century starts pulsating echoes of that economy. To which we all seemed to have paid as much attention as that 12 year old who lost interest. But maybe it is because of the spreading shadow of that time in our history that I’m suddenly fascinated by that era again.

Well… to be fair… in fiction only. But, as I read Mildred Pierce… and start swallowing up other novels set in that decade (penned in later decades), I find myself craving more. Is it a way to understand my present through the lessons of emotions from the past? I felt a similar historic empathy when living in London during 9.11 to the Blitz. Or does the understanding create the appreciation?

Or maybe I’m just feeling a romanticized nostalgia for a time when people didn’t communicate and entertain one another via plastic gizmos held in the palm of their hands.

Whatever. It’s a fascinating ride… and if ever you are in the mood for a discussion of books, let me know. I’m just hoping that Todd Haynes does justice to Mildred. But I’m less optimistic for the Twilight dude as Jacob Jankowski.