Reader, I married her—my partner Mary Edith Mardis. The ceremony took place in East Hampton, New York, on September 23, 2011. We had a quiet wedding. Mary Edith and I, the female judge who performed the service, and two of our friends as witnesses alone were present. We alerted only the members of our families and a few close friends and promised to have a party at a later time.
I have now been married for almost three years and hold myself supremely blessed to have this late-in-life chance at happiness. We do a lot of little things together: shop for groceries, cook, watch movies, play golf, and think about small home improvements. As a photographer, Mary Edith is much more visual than I and is always helping me to see better the world around me. We both like to read and, her interest whetted by my enthusiasm, she is currently half way through David Copperfield.
When we sent out the word about our altered status, the congratulations soon poured in. I was touched by a message from my brother Robert, who lives in New Mexico, happily married to his second wife. Though we’re only intermittently in touch, he’s the person who has known me longer than anyone else alive. After I had phoned him with my news, he emailed me the following message:
Dear Wendy,
You caught me by surprise with your news that you and Mary Edith have gotten married, so I’m not sure I managed to offer my congratulations and true best wishes.
How incredible that you should be married again! It must be very nice for you . . . for both of you. My feeling is that Marriage #2 is usually a huge improvement on Marriage #1—in my case, certainly, and I hope in yours—something you embark upon with much more wisdom and with your eyes open.
So good luck and all happiness to you both.
It’s the marriage plot ending, after all! Thank you, Robert, for your heartfelt good wishes. I imagine our mother being pleased about us both and confiding to a sidekick ghost she has charmed, “You see, I hoped they would be happy in their marriages.” Thank you, Jane Eyre, for accompanying me to the last paragraphs of this journey. And thank you, Mary Edith, for our life together that goes so far beyond the bounds of fiction.
READING GROUP QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION
1. What does reading mean to Wendy Fairey? What does it mean to you?
2. Bookmarked explores the works of fiction that have most deeply affected one reader and marked the stages of her life. If you were to draw up a comparable list for yourself, what titles would it include?
3. What personal experience would you bring to your reading of one or more of the books discussed in Bookmarked? How would your relation to these books be similar to or different from the author’s?
4. Do you like to reread old favorites? If so, take one example and describe that rereading experience?
5. Wendy Fairey’s mother, Sheilah Graham, is a central figure in her book. What do you think of her as she’s portrayed in Bookmarked? Do you have someone equally important in your own life?
6. The author explores the way that socially marginal figures such as the orphan, the new woman, the artist, and the immigrant became central in the English novel. Do these protagonists have an abiding appeal to contemporary readers? If so, how and why? If not, why not?
7. Can you name the literary character that you identify with most closely? Explain the basis for your choice.
8. In this age of rapid and abbreviated communication (Facebook, Twitter, blogging, ten-second sound bites), what place remains for the classic works of English fiction, some of them indeed “loose baggy monsters?” Do you have patience for long books? What is your experience of reading them?
9. Wendy Fairey explores the persistence and permutations of the marriage plot in life and in fiction. Is this a theme that engages you? Why/why not?
10. The final chapter of Bookmarked focuses on Indian English fiction of the last twenty years. To what extent are you familiar with this work or with other Anglophone fiction? What might be its interest and appeal?
11. Is there any novel discussed in Bookmarked you hadn’t previously read but would now like to? And if so, why?
12. Do you like/not like the mix in Bookmarked of personal reflection and literary analysis?
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks begin with loving remembrance of my mother, Sheilah Graham, who set me on the path of reading and loving English novels, and of all the English teachers who inspired and encouraged me.
In the years I have spent writing this book, there are many people who have helped me, both with insights about particular novels they, too, feel marked by and with critiques of my work. I thank Roni Natov, Rachel Brownstein, Ellen Belton, and, above all, the indefatigable Ellen Tremper, all colleagues at Brooklyn College, not only for reading my chapters but also for sharing their very personal responses to the books we teach in common. And I thank my students, who have helped keep literature alive for me.
I am also deeply grateful to Jeanne Betancourt, John Major, Lee Quinby, and Sandra Robinson—other friends who gave so generously of their time in reading and commenting on drafts of my manuscript. I thank them for consistently challenging my language and formulations and supporting my project from its start to finish. And I thank, too, the participants in our nonfiction writers’ group, who, mostly as non-academics, critiqued my drafts and helped me be mindful, always, of the common reader: Mindy Lewis, the late Susan Ribner, Joanna Torrey, Ingrid Hughes, Christine Wade, and Patricia Laurence.
My agent Charlotte Sheedy, whose own abiding love of English novels infused her support of my project, also deserves great thanks. Not only did she take on representing the book, but both she and her daughter Ally Sheedy also offered extraordinarily insightful readings of its earlier drafts that helped me bring the project to conclusion. I also wish to thank Jeannette Seaver of Arcade Press for
