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Novels by Mary Marcus
New on the Blog
You’re still allowed to love him.
Of Course Atticus Finch Is A Racist! You’re still allowed to love him! I’m curious to read Go Set A Watchman. I wasn’t all that surprised to find out Gregory Peck/Atticus is a racist. But, of course, I’m from the South. Southern gentlemen with fine manners and soft voices are often barbaric on the subject of race. And on the subject of women. Yes even now, even in 2015. To me this character complication doesn’t make him less of a man, just more of a complicated, realistic man. In a small southern town during the Great Depression, nearly every man was racist. Some were worse than others. Some were scared and mean out of fear, some were just plain mean. Some were going with the flow—the great, silent evil of not even noticing there’s anything wrong. As a reading public, many of us loved the fictional Atticus Finch because he stood up for a black man when this involved courage and cunning. He was the moral compass of the town. In Go Set A Watchman, he still is, but now, Scout is old enough to see her father isn’t perfect. And truly, defending a man in court doesn’t make you a liberal. Atticus is a lawyer first, last and always. And he’s a man who upholds the status quo. In 2015 in every town across America, people are still racist. We can all see it. Look at what’s happened this year in Ferguson and Baltimore. Just last month President Obama gave a speech in which he said, “we are not healed!” that’s an understatement. Gloria Steinem once famously remarked “the...
Going Home
The South is something you carry with you no matter where you go. Or how far you travel from it in mind and body. Even if for no other reason than the fact that I stand up always when an older person enters a room, I know I’m southern. Louisiana was where I was born and reared after all, and even though I pretty much lost most of my southern accent on purpose, married a Yankee and had a son born on the Upper East Side, I still knew I was southern. Southern women who are aspiring writers often end up moving to New York. And then writing about their early lives in small southern towns. Flannery O’Connor, Carson McCullers, Harper Lee, Kathryn Stockett all moved to New York and wrote about the South. “When you live in New York, you often have the feeling that New York’s not the world. I mean this: every time I come home, I feel like I’m coming back to the world, and when I leave Maycomb it’s like I’m leaving the world. It’s silly. I can’t explain it, and what makes it sillier is that I’d go stark raving living in Maycomb.” — Go Set A Watchman These writers write about young adult women coming home after being away, as I did about the character Mary Jacob Ascher in my most recent novel Lavina. Scout Finch makes the journey home to Atticus on a train, Mary Jacob makes the journey home to Jack Long on a plane. City turns to suburbs turns to farmland, and then there you are on your parents’ doorstep, all the...
Bambi Be Damned
I’ll have the Bambi with a nice Cabernet, please! Hunters are cruel, sadistic men with orange vests and vile natures. They swagger into the forest and slaughter, then hang the bloody carcass’ on the roof of their four wheel drive vehicles, chugging beer all the way home. That’s the cliché we liberals have bought into. I’m thinking ofBambi, the Disney movie. I’m thinking of Tawny, the wonderful children’s book by Chas Carner. We’ve all grown up to worship deer. I used to love the deer: and in fact, I still love their beauty, their grace, and how they come so quietly among us. But deer are a big problem here on Long Island and also in Connecticut as well. Here in East Hampton there are two factions. The so-called Pro Deer Faction who say, no hunting, or very little hunting. And the other faction, The Pro Hunting Faction who want to bring professional hunters in to thin out the population. Lately, the Anti-hunting folks have been winning. Their newest brainchild: the deer sterilization program is a crummy way to tame nature. No I don’t like guns. But, I like shooting deer a lot better than I like the alternative solution: a sterilization program that seems creepier, more sinister than hiring a bunch of professional hunters. Doe have been turning up recently, pregnant, septic, emaciated, and vets are then brought in and forced to kill them. All at the taxpayers expense. Is this more humane than professional hunters who could even donate the meat to food pantries to feed the hungry? Or sell the venison to restaurants. Because hunting is...
The New Me
Lavina
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