 |
||||||||
Rediscovering Rebecca West—The first International Rebecca West Society Conference—was a great success, full of excitement and enthusiasm for this new and deserving venture. An unexpected strike at Long Island University sent West Society founder Bernard Schweizer scrambling to find an alternative site, but the Mercantile Library, near the bustling diamond district in midtown Manhattan, proved perfect. West scholars came from America, Britain, Ireland, Italy, and Mexico to enjoy good conversation and good food, as well as panels that covered myriad aspects of West’s long career. It began with a stellar keynote address by Jane Marcus, the seminal feminist critic who worked with West to publish The Young Rebecca, and whose status as groundbreaking scholar and academic “mother” beautifully fit the occasion. The political panel that followed afterwards was highly stimulating, confirming once again the quick-silvery quality of West’s ideology. Bernard Schweizer characterized it once like this: “Never willing to toe any specific party line, West often stepped on the toes of her political opponents in almost every camp.” Indeed, each panel—whether on music, gender, archival documents, or philosophy—confirmed Schweizer’s point, and inspired lively discussions.
Anne Bobby’s Saturday evening performance of Carl Rollyson’s Rebecca West: A Saga of the Century was a remarkable tour-de-force, a bravura performance that will be long remembered. The setting (she was standing right in front of the ookshelves) was perfect. It was a magic moment, enhanced by the wine and hors d’oeuvres we enjoyed first. We heard, as if straight from a fiery, living West, her youthful socialist liberal ideas, her tortured early desire for H.G. Wells, and her disgust for the rock where black lambs were sacrificed: “This stone, the knife, the filth, the blood, is what many people desire beyond anything else. . .” Anne’s dark beauty and intelligent, passionate reading made our spines prickle in recognition: this was the breathing, thinking woman. We are grateful to Anne and Helen Macleod for adapting and producing Carl’s superb collation of West words. The teaching panel next morning contradicted conventional wisdom about conferences: practically EVERYBODY showed up for it at 9 a.m.! We arranged ourselves in a circle, and one could feel the germination of a real sense of community there. Bonnie Kime Scott gave a witty and informed introduction, and the participants did not hold back with comments and reminiscences about their own experiences teaching West, especially “Indissoluble Matrimony,” which was disliked by students for its apparent “male-bashing” and unbalanced emotionality. Other students felt it was uneasily situated between tragedy and grotesque. At one point, Marion Macleod delivered a wonderful anecdote, in which she reminisced that Rebecca always complained about H.G. Wells slashing the air with his arm as he shook his writing utensil, because he usually had a “leaky pen.” (Well, that’s one way of putting it.) Thus we learned that Rebecca’s famous affair included, not so famously, constant cushion cleaning. The publisher’s panel that ended the conference was incredibly interesting, and posed a real challenge to West “missionaries.” Jean Casella from the Feminist Press remarked that constituencies far more militant than the tame Rebecca West group had badgered her relentlessly to publish their favorite authors, implying that we may feel free to step up the effort. Edwin Frank from NYRB Classics said that issuing the Aubrey trilogy as one volume (Bernard’s perennial pet project) is out of the question, both financially and practically, since they already issued The Fountain Overflows separately. (Fountain is selling far above expectations mainly because it was briefly mentioned in the Oprah Magazine, as the one novel Jay Leno’s wife, Mavis, recommends!) He also suggested that publishing West would be easier if we could only agree on the ONE central text that each one of us would teach and that would be required reading for students. (Any suggestions?) John Kulka from Yale insinuated that there “might be room for a West anthology if it were done exactly right.” Carl Rollyson then made the visionary proposal that we could self-publish a certain number of copies of, say, The Birds Fall Down, to satisfy the teaching demands of a specified number of West scholars. Once the teaching can be shown to “move” a certain number of copies regularly, a trade publisher might be willing put the book on their list. From Dennis Drabelle (Washington Post) we learned that re-issued books are almost never reviewed, while new publications are, such as The Sentinel and Survivors in Mexico. Finally, we were thrilled to have in attendance several members of West’s family: her niece Mrs. Alison Selford, her nephew Dr. Norman Macleod, his wife Marion, and their daughter Helen Atkinson. Each contributed fascinating stories (see Norman’s essay in this newsletter). West’s last secretary, the novelist Diana Stainforth, discussed the particulars of working for “Dame Rebecca,” and stressed what Alison Selford had said earlier: “Rebecca was a worker” whose energy and discipline helped her to produce an enormous body of writing. Generous, warm, demanding, she remained in her old age “interested in everything.” She loved to “go through the shops,” Diana said, and was convinced that her secretary—who wanted to work part time in order to write—must be having an affair with a married man on her days off! West’s friend Kit Wright, who had hosted her in Mexico and Connecticut, was also at the conference. From all these friends and family members, scholars and readers, we sensed real affection for the woman and artist Rebecca West. If at times it was mixed with disagreement—how could it be otherwise with Dame Rebecca?—nevertheless respect and admiration always won out. We anticipate our next conference with pleasure, and hope to see new members among the originals who made this first so fine.
|
||||||||
