Last August when I was in Raleigh and my daughters, mother, and I spent a day in Cameron Village, I purchased this book: "Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters" by Anne Boyd Rioux, which I pretty much read before I returned to Joliet.
I first read the book at age eight, an old book with crumbling pages between a hard orange cover that had been my mother's. I fell in love with the story and read more of Alcott's works.
I adored An Old-Fashioned Girl, also my mother's. Eight Cousins, borrowed from the library at St. Bernard's Catholic School in Joliet (which no longer stands), was boring, although I attempted a reading of it several times because I liked the cover and Alcott.
By the time I'd read Little Women, I already knew I wanted to be a writer "when I grew up," so Jo's aspirations and activities felt natural to me, even though she wasn't my favorite character.
The characters. That's the point of this blog.
It was not a book I could discuss with my friends as none of them knew what Little Women was. In fact, I have never had a discussion of this book with anyone, although I'm sure some of the people I now know have most likely read it.
I have also never watched a movie adaption. I tried the one with June Allyson, but it was so boring, I never finished it.
Long before I wrote an entire novel, or took a psychology class with the dynamic Sister Mary George when I attended Providence High School in New Lenox, I instinctively understood the multi-layered elements of building realistic characters.
As a child, I understood even adults were more than the exteriors I saw as a child.
So at family parties, I could have been no more than nine, I would approach the adult women and ask them if they had read Little Women. Nearly all of them had.
And then I would ask them which was their favorite character and why. Most were taken aback; all of them answered.
Their responses gave me insight into who they were as people.
Even as books such as Rioux's gives me insight into how Alcott built a story that endured.
For writers cannot write in a vacuum. Every idea comes from somewhere, and that somewhere is usually experience, even if only a strand of experience is pulled from one's life before twisted into a new purpose.
I'm sure many writers would want Alcott's legacy.
But anyone who knows Alcott's backstory would know that Little Women was, most likely, not the type of story she wanted to last beyond her.
It's not easy being a writer even into perpetuity.
I first read the book at age eight, an old book with crumbling pages between a hard orange cover that had been my mother's. I fell in love with the story and read more of Alcott's works.
I adored An Old-Fashioned Girl, also my mother's. Eight Cousins, borrowed from the library at St. Bernard's Catholic School in Joliet (which no longer stands), was boring, although I attempted a reading of it several times because I liked the cover and Alcott.
By the time I'd read Little Women, I already knew I wanted to be a writer "when I grew up," so Jo's aspirations and activities felt natural to me, even though she wasn't my favorite character.
The characters. That's the point of this blog.
It was not a book I could discuss with my friends as none of them knew what Little Women was. In fact, I have never had a discussion of this book with anyone, although I'm sure some of the people I now know have most likely read it.
I have also never watched a movie adaption. I tried the one with June Allyson, but it was so boring, I never finished it.
Long before I wrote an entire novel, or took a psychology class with the dynamic Sister Mary George when I attended Providence High School in New Lenox, I instinctively understood the multi-layered elements of building realistic characters.
As a child, I understood even adults were more than the exteriors I saw as a child.
So at family parties, I could have been no more than nine, I would approach the adult women and ask them if they had read Little Women. Nearly all of them had.
And then I would ask them which was their favorite character and why. Most were taken aback; all of them answered.
Their responses gave me insight into who they were as people.
Even as books such as Rioux's gives me insight into how Alcott built a story that endured.
For writers cannot write in a vacuum. Every idea comes from somewhere, and that somewhere is usually experience, even if only a strand of experience is pulled from one's life before twisted into a new purpose.
I'm sure many writers would want Alcott's legacy.
But anyone who knows Alcott's backstory would know that Little Women was, most likely, not the type of story she wanted to last beyond her.
It's not easy being a writer even into perpetuity.
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