Madeleine L'Engle

Madeleine L’Engle died a few weeks ago, and I was genuinely saddened by this news, but it also got me to thinking about an issue that’s come up over and over again in my life. The problem is: when the subject of A Wrinkle in Time comes up, which I’d say it does at least once a year in my life, given the nature of what Miss Edith has always done for a living, why is it that I have no way of convincing people that I thought all of those books were just boring as fuck? How can I convince people that when I say, “I couldn’t stand the Narnia books,” what I mean is, I really hated reading the Narnia books, and was never able to absorb The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, let alone the rest of the series. No one ever believes me. There’s some kind of button in peoples’ minds that goes on – automatically – when they think of a bookish child – which Miss Edith certainly was – that equates “bookish child” with “Narnia, Hobbit, Wrinkle in Time.”

Folks, I’m saying this again: I hated all that stuff as a child. When I was at an age when I could have been reading that stuff, I was reading Judie Angell, Ellen Conford, and Norma Klein. I have not regretted this a whit. No one talks about Judie Angell, Ellen Conford, or Norma Klein, but I think about them all the time and I would heartily recommend them to young girls today, if they cared, which I’m sure they don’t. (Though Norma Klein’s books do have enough sex in them to seem realistic today, I note – which means that, if we’re honest, teenage sex a la Gossip Girl isn’t really a recent innovation. Someone ought to give Ms. Klein her due; it’s too bad she’s not alive to offer commentary on this subject in the New York Times or something.)

I know this is snotty, dear ones, but bear with me: I have a theory that goes like this. Narnia, Tolkien, and Wrinkle in Time readers develop into people – particularly if they’re boys – who like Rush and Pink Floyd too much. The girls, well, I can’t quite pinpoint their musical tastes but I’d imagine they lean toward the Celtic (Richard Thompson and Kirsty MacColl at the good end, and all that dross that I can’t even begin to think about at the other end.) We’re talking SCA and ren faires, here.

And then there are the girls who read Ellen Conford and so forth, and the boys who maybe read them too but also read Paul Zindel, and these people grew up to be English majors in college who really loved Edith Wharton and Jane Austen. The ren faire crowd is fairly thin here.

You know where Miss Edith stands. And Miss Edith will admit that she’s annoying, but anyone who’s ever examined her shoes – for example, that pink suede pair she dropped off at the cobbler’s yesterday, extremely elegant, thanks for noticing – knows that she’s not too interested in the suede-lace-up boot so popular among SCA types; it just doesn’t show off the ankle enough. Basically, this is a matter, I’m saying, of personal style. Madeleine L’Engle spoke to people who would grow up to wear mullets and shags and shirts that lace up the front. But what if your idea of chic headgear isn’t a metal helmet suitable for jousting but rather a snappy cloche? Well, then you evolved from Norma Klein to Dorothy Parker. There it is.

L’Engle was an old, old woman when she died, and it’s well-known that her family was always pissed off at her about one thing or another. But I wished that in all the hushed, worshipful pieces that were published about her at her death, more than one of them had spoken honestly and said, “Listen, if you weren’t REALLY into this stuff, it was INSUFFERABLY BORING.” The only piece I read anywhere that spoke to me about L’Engle was Meghan Cox Gurdon’s piece in the Wall Street Journal. And god bless her for it.

When I was eighteen, I read a book L’Engle wrote about marriage entitled Two-Part Invention and I loved it. I haven’t looked at it in years, and perhaps I ought to have a gander at it now, knowing that she manipulated the truth of her life over and over again for writing purposes – but even if I don’t, I will remember that book with more fondness and more respect than any of her children’s books. Call me evil, but that’s what Miss Edith thinks.