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Go to the Beginning Black Notebook (which concerns Anna's novel Frontiers of War) (Brought to you by kat impatientreader.com) The entry 11th November 1955 opens with a London scene involving animal cruelty (to a pigeon) that I'd advise you to skip over. This event in Anna's life reminds her of an episode in her earlier life back with the comrades in Rhodesia. Mrs. Boothby, the proprietor with her husband of the Mashopi hotel, still has a crush on Paul. She gives him a .22 rifle and asks him and the comrades to go out in the countryside and shoot pigeons for a pigeon-pie. Which they do when they're not stomping on insects. Paul shoots several pigeons, and makes a big point of sending Jimmy who adores him to fetch the bird carcasses as if he's a dog. This scene, which in my opinion you could also skip, fills the left side of the Black notebook where Anna puts her source material. On the right side of the Black notebook, where Anna keeps stuff related to the commercial aspects of Frontiers of War, she puts a letter from a New Zealand publication asking her for portions of her journal to publish. Anna writes back with a refusal, and then amuses herself by jotting down several pseudo journal entries from the viewpoint of a callow American boy traveling through Europe on his father's dime, pretending to be a writer. She then details how she meets an American writer named James Schafter and shows him these pretend entries. A kindred spirit, Schafter is delighted. Anna then goes on to include some pseudo journal-entries that both of them make up from the viewpoint of a middle-aged British lady writer who has spent time in the African colonies: the kind of overly earnest stuff that the New Zealand publication would have expected from her. Anna also includes in the Black notebook an overwrought short-story set in Africa that she writes as a parody. She ends this part of the Black notebook with three critical reviews of her Frontiers of War novel that showed up in various Soviet publications. Red Notebook (Anna's disillusionment with Communism) Three entries from 1955 and 1956 explore the mood of the British Communist Party after Stalin's death in 1953. Though Anna has left the Party, they are trying to woo her back. The 20th Congress of the Russian Communist Party has filled the British idealists with hope, and they want to clear out the "deadwood" (the old Party members who have been lying and scheming) and naively expect the oldsters to resign for "the good of the Party." Anna is filled with renewed hope and then disillusionment. The Yellow Notebook (Anna's new autobiographical novel): Ella moves into a new flat which makes her former housemate Julia resentful. Ella now feels less protected from the attentions of men. Male acquaintances actually start calling her up, announcing that their wives are out of town, and inviting Ella to dinner. Invariably she ends up sleeping with them after which they devastate her with a cutting remark. Then these men tend to come back for more sex a few weeks later as if nothing has happened. The same thing happens to Julia so they renew their friendship on the basis of their shared contempt for men. Ella decides to give up sex. Ella decides to concentrate on her writing. Ella visits her father who is a widowed old ex-soldier who has become sort of a mystical hermit. He seems pleased by her visit but not especially connected to her. She gets him to admit that her long-dead mother had so little interest in sex that he went out and had affairs. She asks him why he didn't just work things out with her mother and their sex life; apparently this option never occurred to him. She gets him to admit that he writes mystical poetry. He shows her a few poems. |
