#mrs. bridge

[macrolit]

about that ms. and mr. bridge set you reblogged, is that actually available??? if so, where can i buy it

*If* it’s available, my guess is you can only get it from Penguin Books UK. The OP, @shapethepage, designs a lot of books for Penguin UK. 

[kammartinez]

Mrs. Bridge Is a Perfect Novel. But How Does It Work?

For years, I resisted Mrs. Bridge. I remember picking up the 50th-anniversary edition from a display of staff picks at McNally-Jackson; some

[kamreadsandrecs]

Mrs. Bridge Is a Perfect Novel. But How Does It Work?

For years, I resisted Mrs. Bridge. I remember picking up the 50th-anniversary edition from a display of staff picks at McNally-Jackson; some

[bookcoversonly]

Title: Mrs. Bridge | Author: Evan S. Connell | Publisher: Penguin (2012)

[schasem]

[universitybookstore]

"If she bought a book it was almost always one of three things: a best-seller she had heard about or seen advertised, a self-improvement book, or a book by a Kansas City author no matter what it was about." -- from Mrs. Bridge, by Evan S. Connell.  A great American novel, now too little read.

[peterschlehmil]

Richard Artschwager, Mrs. Bridge (2009)  Acrylic, pastel, and chalk on HMP on sound board

One of the most important artists to emerge during the twentieth century, Artschwager’s playful and diverse oeuvre has influenced generations of younger artists by challenging assumptions about perception and the aesthetic, material and spatial experience of art and the everyday. Spanning over forty years, Artschwager’s practice explored the mediums of sculpture, painting and drawing in order to understand the relationship between art and objects, and the environment they inhabit.

Artschwager’s work is typically characterized by playful and provocative slippages between different media, conflating the visual world of images, which can be perceived but not physically grasped, and the tactile world of objects. This dynamic relationship between pictorial representation and sculptural practices in the artist’s work is evident in his paintings, which are the focus of the exhibition. While his sculptures are likewise defined by coloration and their painterly elements as well as by their forms and materials, Artschwager’s paintings are contextually and formalistically based on the elements of texture and surface. Artschwager applied traditional artists media including charcoals, acrylics, pastels and paints, to Celotex, a rigid compound board formed from pressed fibers and generally used in construction. Although it has a smooth side, Artschwager executed the image on the texture’s reverse, exploiting the rough surface as an active participant that is essential to the work’s imagery, expression and meaning, and animates the pictorial surface. Artschwager bordered the portraits with heavy, wooden or mirrored frames, propelling his paintings further into the three-dimensional realm.

Artschwager rarely painted from real life, constructing imagery instead from memory, or using photographs and newspaper images enlarged to the size of easel paintings as the basis of his work, as in Generation IV, (2003). The magnification of the photographs, combined with the highly textured surfaces, cause the images to appear grainy and blurred, rendering the characters unrecognizable, yet retaining a heavy, sculptural effect. The grisaille techniques deployed in portraits such as Was me (2008) and Sixty + (2008) also work to invoke a photorealist aesthetic, prompting a non-subjective, and more object-like way of approaching the painting and the figure depicted. In other paintings, Artschwager incorporates vivid colours, as seen in Mr. Bridge (2009), featuring a deep purple backdrop which lends a surreal, dreamlike environment to the composition.  Artschwager used the form of portraiture to explore and understand the human condition. While the theme of domesticity runs through the artist’s work, evident in Artschwager’s early forms which appropriate domestic objects such as tables, chairs, lecterns and mirrors, the portraits on show reveal a shift in focus from the interior of the domestic space, to the interiority of people. The disconcerting perspectives and scales deployed in these compositions give the work a dissonance. In Self Portrait with Green Background, (2009) the figure seems energized by the rich green background, a colour of renewal, yet a sense of melancholy pervades the image, the face appearing empty and grey. The haziness of the image functions as a mask, a means to maintain distance, and infuse the grisaille paintings with ambiguity.(Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers,   from wsi-mag.com)

portrait of the artist by Nigel Perry

[shhimreading]

Review: Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell

Life, love, and the truth of a woman’s heart are found in the pages of Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell.

This unique novel follows the life and growth of Mrs. India Bridge in upper middle-class Kansas City suburbia between WWI and WWII, and in just 254 pages reveals to us what it really meant to be a wife and mother during that time. The book begins with Mrs. Bridge’s life running smoothly day-to-day. Her children are young, spritely, and sometimes unconventional in ways that don’t make sense to Mrs. Bridge, a woman of manners and class. A woman devoted to her husband, the stern, sole breadwinner of the family who is often not around.

Through a series of very short episodes each about a page or two long, Mrs. Bridge carries on her life running errands, gossiping with the other housewives, hosting dinner parties, and being painfully persistent trying to keep her children on the straight and narrow path which she herself knows so well.

But as time goes on, Mrs. Bridge’s perfect, well-mannered life starts to fray. Her children eventually move away to unexpected places and sometimes defy her, her friends reveal themselves to be less put together than she assumed, and she comes to the realization that her life is only given meaning through the mindless tasks of mothering, schmoozing, and being “the perfect wife” to a husband who is rarely there.

This book takes a hard look on this point in American history, and makes us ask, “Is life really worth it when it is being lived so monotonously?” Toward the end of the book Mrs. Bridge often finds herself staring into the dead of night, contemplating her role and purpose as so many things she identified with now seem frivolous or have disappeared completely.

There is a moment of clarity when Mrs. Bridge lay in bed recalling a book she had left on the mantle long ago, “which observed that some people go skimming over the years of existence to sink gently into a placid grave, ignorant of life to the last without ever having been made to see all it may contain,” which she then had to put down. This episode ends by saying: “She wondered what had interfered, where she had gone, and why she had never returned.”

This I feel perfectly represents the inner turmoil Mrs. Bridge feels about her life at this point in time.

This novel also ironically points out the almost-nonexistent presence of her husband, Mr. Bridge, and how two people can be an integral part of each other’s lives without hardly being in each other’s lives at all. The way that Mrs. Bridge lives entirely for her husband without really living with her husband speaks volumes to the societal norm of the time of how the wives served the purpose of their family and practically nothing else.

There is even a scene where the Bridges are at a country club having dinner, and there is suddenly news of a tornado coming toward them. Mr. Bridge refuses to budge from his seat and takes his sweet time finishing his dinner, regardless of the fact that everyone else has retreated to the basement for safety. Even more shocking, is while she feels a bit uneasy about the situation, Mrs. Bridge simply sits quietly next to her husband carrying out her dreadful, dutiful role and neglecting her own safety.

This is one of many moments in this chronicle of Mrs. Bridge’s life where she has been subject to the influence of her husband, and nothing else. This book drives its reader forward at every page turn since each one is a new episode and new short story all together. It takes you on a trip to a time when upper middle-class citizens ruled by bumming smokes and keeping secrets. When “marriage” meant “money,” and the only known purpose a woman had was found in the bottom of the cocktail she served.

Mrs. Bridge explores the inner-workings of a woman’s heart during this time, and brings it into full, colorful understanding in a story that is quietly heartbreaking and thought provoking.

((Written for Ethos Magazine)) Popsugar Ultimate Reading Challenge:  -12) A book of short stories -17) A book a friend recommended