I am my own riddle...Byatt's Possession

I have colluded with Jabba to read and blog about A.S. Byatt's Possession, and when I say collude I mean email stalk her until she agreed to do blog book club.

I have seen the movie Possession (which I love) and have been meaning to read the book for a while. This presents an interesting situation: reading the book after watching the movie - will the movie ruin the book?

It should be noted I recently attempted (and failed) to read Byatt's latest - The Children's Book - as she went on so many tangents (and I love a good tangent) that there were more tangents than plot.

I was optimistic, though. How could I not be? I love the premise: two modern day academics delving into the mysterious and connected history of two Victorian poets who fell in love - and the couples are falling in love foils for each other, and who doesn't love a nice foil (tangents and foils...is this math class?). And I love Victorian literature - and Byatt seems to wish she was Victorian. Especially with sentences like this: "Did you not find it as strange as I did, that we should so immediately understand each other so well? For we did understand each other uncommonly well, did we not?"

Translation: I'm feelin' you, are you feelin' me? Circle yes or no.

And then - when talking about memorizing poetry - Byatt writes, "An odd phrase, 'by heart,' he would add, as though poems were stored in the bloodstream." Because...aren't they? Perhaps only for English majors.

But then, my love of the movie and poetry (which Byatt wrote herself - props - and begins many a chapter) only took me so far.

I began skipping the tangents. One of the main characters is writing stories about faeries? Pass. Let's get back to the main story.

And then I started not to like the characters. The male academic is boring and petty and is in a dead relationship which annoys me. The female academic is almost awesome, but not quite. I might be in a different place reading the book, than the naive romantic I was when watching the movie, but I'm upset that these selfish writers (and academics - remember the love foil) are hurting the people they have devoted their lives to for a tryst. And I just want to yell at them HAVE SOME RESPECT FOR PEOPLE AND END ONE THING BEFORE YOU BEGIN ANOTHER...

That being said, some of the writing is gorgeous. My favorite is when Christabel LaMotte (female poet) says of their love affair, "I shall never forget our shining progress towards one another. Never have I felt such a concentration of my entire being. I cannot let you burn me up, nor can I resist you. No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed...did you not flame and I catch fire?"

My favorite character in the book, however, is the wife of the poet. She is quiet but strong, and not prone to flights of fancy like the others. She - the paragon of Victorian wife-liness - says, "I wanted to be a Poet and a Poem, and now I am neither...no one wishes a man to be a Poem. That young girl in her muslin was a poem...but I now think - it might have been better, might it not, to have held on to the desire to be a Poet?"

Well well, now THIS is interesting. If the poet represents men (the hero blah blah blah) and the poem women (the muse blah blah blah), what does it indicate if a woman who once thought she could be both poet and poem and then society was all 'nope muse prison box for you,' and who has been a successful muse (woman) is lamenting giving up her poet (masculine) yearnings? AND that Byatt has this truly provocative statement - for the time - come, not from the woman who proclaimed personal freedom and yet let herself be wooed by the flame of passion, but from the housewife. Touche Byatt.

I wanted to really love Possession - I wanted to get lost in the love stories - but now, what I really want is an editor to stand up to Byatt and just-say-no to the useless tangents and yes to the beautiful words, ideas, and poetry obscured by them.

Please?

*I'm secretly hoping that Jabba finds a way to get me on board with this novel...

"Who can endure to think of greedy hands furrowing through Dickens's desk for his private papers, for these records of personal sentiment that were his and his only - not meant for public consumption - though now those who will not reread his marvelous books with true care will sup up his so-called Life in his Letters."
A. S. Byatt