Go Back to the Edge of Seventeen

Today my daughter turned seventeen. Right before the anniversary of the exact moment of her birth, I came blaring at her down the hallway with my recording of Stevie Nicks singing "Edge of Seventeen." 

image credit: Erik Baker

Corny, but all the more fun as she looked up at me without moving her head, but with the classic teenage stance toward the world: a beneath the breath "Whaaat?"

 Repose, John White Alexander, 1856-1918

Many people already know the music trivia that explains the title-- that Tom Petty's wife stated in her southern accent that she had met him at the "age of seventeen". Stevie Nicks heard it as "edge" and a song was born. There are other perfect lines in this song fit for a teen's birthday, and ones that also kick up nostalgia for their babyhood, and nostalgia for our own seventeenhood.

My daughter asked me why people look back on that age as being so great and I replied that it's a strange transition in life. Your childhood is behind you, but the big unknown future has not quite arrived. You know yourself pretty well by that time and you can do so much that an adult can do such as drive a car, buy stuff with your own money, notice what you like and don't like about the opposite sex, complain about the world, and analyze your personal problems. But there is also still a great deal of innocence that lets you get away with so much without worry and you can respond to your prospects with a bemused "I don't know."

As an adult who still doesn't know as much as I need to, and who often feels like a bewildered but hopeful seventeen year old, I need regular reminders of the power of that transitional time. For a while, I had these two lines from the "Edge of Seventeen" posted on my laptop where I could see them as a daily nudge to return briefly to that inspired yet innocent frame of mind; the one that is so hard to find on some days as an adult with the pressing demands that began in the past. Even if it is a pop song from the eighties, these lines stand outside of it for me, as the stance that everyone should be in toward those who more practiced:

"When I see you doing what I try to do for me

With the words from a poet

And the voice from a choir

And a melody

Nothing else mattered."

A lot matters to me besides my own creativity. Being an artist and a hard worker isn't a pass for egomania. But there are moments in any kind of meaningful work when they really do need to feel like nothing else matters, because this is what you do, and is one of many important reasons why you are here.

Note: a funny thing happened on the way to the big moment of my daughter turning seventeen. As I was doing a little dance for her along with the song, I noticed that my foot was bleeding and leaving small dots on the floor. I checked to see a tiny grain of glass that had embedded itself into the ball of my foot and I laughed. If I needed a salient reminder that I am the mother and not the innocent baby, and not the seventeen year old in bloom, that did it. There will always be a tiny embedded pain in my heart as they fly off and do what they need to do as if nothing else matters.

Thank you, Stevie.

Prometheus: The Creative Impulse and Chain Reactions

Prometheus followed his bliss. And ended up chained to a rock, having his liver eaten out by an eagle. Every day. All because of his beliefs.

Beliefs take us places. It's important for us to know what those beliefs are. It could be that our creative impulse, our drive to live fully, our spirit in flight, didn't end with a celebration. It was fueled by and ended with passion, which is Latin for "suffering." But the suffering that Prometheus faced is everlasting torment, which speaks to the suffering of the soul as well as the body.

Prometheus, the immortal Titan of Greece created mankind. Humans weren't that well suited for Earth, being more vulnerable than animals to the elements. He suffered along with his creation, and this shared suffering agitated him into action. He was driven to relieve them of their cold and hunger and so, dared to steal fire from Mount Olympus, from the gods who had determined for themselves that only they should have it and control it.

This rebellion, more than a simple act of theft, is why Prometheus had especially angered them. He dared to believe differently from them and what they had pronounced. The gods believed that they were the only ones fit to keep fire, because of their supremacy, and also because fire is power, and any power not in their hands is a threat to their order. The gods are pure human ego, and ego doesn't put up with being challenged or held to account.

So it's important to remember the reason behind the theft on his side. He wasn't seeing what it felt like to steal. He didn't have a reputation as a thief to uphold. He suffered within himself the belief that he loved his creation more than those who were in power did. Had he not given fire to humanity, he would no longer know himself as Prometheus, and would live to regret his loss of self.  The fire would give mankind protection, light, civilization, and creative abilities. He wanted his people to have fire, he believed that they should have it, and he wanted to be the one to give it to them. And for this, he suffers.

Some people suffer just by coming into the world, like these first created humans. Perhaps there isn't enough to go around where and when they live. Or they're born to parents who are ill-equipped for parenting. Or they are sensitive to various plagues of existence. Some people actually go through experiences of having been cuffed or chained or exploited. These sufferings don't come from imaginary situations, just because they are ancient in their forms and complexities and come accompanied by hardened beliefs.

But we should examine our beliefs from time to time, just like our expectations, that can cloud our vision. Beliefs and expectations are twins who inform and transform each other. Prometheus believed his creation had a right to the same fire as the gods, and so he expected himself to provide it. Whether or not his belief was correct, or his expectation too great, could be argued. But the main concern is that his belief led him to a very concrete reality on the face of a cliff.

If we judge him to be a criminal who needs to be made an example of, then we might react to the story with moral satisfaction and keep our own creative impulses and blissful passions in check. Who wants continuous torment? A self-styled martyr perhaps, or a masochist, but mostly no one.

If we judge Prometheus to be a sacrificial hero that placed the needs of his creation above the prevailing law of the times, then we also might be settled with the thought that he ends up a martyr. We may believe his fate to be a terrible but just punishment, and again, we dampen down our spirits for our own good. There's not much inspiration to be found here.

If we believe that Prometheus actually existed and brought fire to us, then we might go so far as to honor him in some way, with a pang of sorrow for his plight. Perhaps someone could build a temple and others could offer something. Curiously, there is only one real temple to Prometheus, in Athens, and no cults sprang up around him, even though he is the creator of human beings in Greek lore.

I read this story as a child, and it has never set right with me, because it ends with ongoing defeat. Personally, I want the story to end with some sort of hope and not condemnation. Otherwise, if I can identify with Prometheus' desire to follow his bliss until his last days, then I feel bound up with Prometheus as that defeated martyr, emotionally. On the level of a story, nothing I could ever do to honor or serve him would be enough to equal his everlasting sufferings on my behalf, even if this is only a myth. It has a psychological weight that shifts itself down through Western civilization. It's one of the ageless tales that keeps us wondering why it was written at all.

This story didn't set right with Plato, either, so he wrote Hercules into the ending, having him unchain Prometheus, as one of his heroic deeds. But I don't find this entirely satisfying either. Prometheus was a Titan, one of the original beings that sprang from Mother Earth; all of them banished by Zeus when he and the other gods and goddesses came into power. This precedent of Prometheus being part of a long turf war seems important to the story, and so the idea that neither Zeus, nor his avenging eagle, nor the fate of humanity have any part of the resolution feels tacked on. Even though it's a story, I don't want to feel that my place in Western Civilization was influenced by a handy Greek action figure that made some sort of karate chops at the chains. I want to understand what this story is communicating from the original writer to me, the person reading it. Apparently, the writer didn't want me to leave this story satisfied, he wanted it to haunt me into a contemplation of it, if I dare.

As stated earlier in this blog, these tales let us know what sort of situation we're in as humans, and most of us have discovered that just wishing really hard doesn't bring about instantaneous magical salvation. The cliff doesn't suddenly become a wall of sand, the eagle doesn't lose its taste for liver, and the chains don't turn into something non-binding. The events of this story appear to me as an Act One and an Act Two, and I'm left wondering about Act Three. 

Plato, may have been a premier teacher of philosophy, but his interfering myth-editing needs some more development. He tried to provide us with an Olympian Gods reboot to feel good about the fate of Prometheus, the weakened Titan progenitor and screw-up, and Hercules, the Olympian Johnny-come-lately savior in a mash-up ending. With this, we are left with nothing more than a horror story, which is how Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus came into being. Her Romantic tale about a man of science taking the creative impulse too far, is based on Prometheus stealing the spark of the gods for mankind. Dr. Frankenstein is the Prometheus who has striven too far as a lone genius, whose passion for his Adam (the only name ever given to his monstrous creature) and his actions lead to ruin. I understand her argument, but it leaves me cold. Perhaps this was true for her husband, Percy, who wrote Prometheus Unbound a few years later.

Boris Karloff in The Bride of Frankenstein, Universal Studios 1935

The story is unsatisfying because life isn't static upon a cliff, and it requires a lot of problem solving. I don't want to wait for a hero while I curse whatever situations have me stuck in Act Two. I need to consider the possibilities available in Act Three. Whatever people come up with to solve their problems won't work for everyone. The solutions need to make some kind of sense at the level of the soul, because the soul is what Prometheus has given up in his predicament. If his body can't be ended, if his soul is trapped within it forever, then freeing his body is only restoring his physical health. It's not restoring his sanity, nor his faith in his own actions, nor his belief in the potential of humanity. He's only a shell of an immortal. He remains a released but alienated creature, like Shelley's "Adam", without a home, exiled from both Olympus and mankind. His passion must somehow free up his soul, or the story goes beyond a tragedy and becomes a doomsday play with a vilification of human creativity at its base.

There is so much more to consider about all three Acts, and how our beginnings, beliefs and expectations shape and strengthen the very real chains that may have us bound and discouraged from time to time. We aren't yet restricted to only look toward a deus ex machina, but can return to Act Three again and again in order to work out a soulful satisfaction.

Babies are Going to Cry

This was the best piece of parenting advice I received, and it was from my dad. I was pregnant, and we lived several states apart at the time. On a short visit to see me during my final trimester, he leveled with me about what I would be facing, with this emphatic and simple phrase, "Now. Babies are going to cry." 

I imagine he was remembering when he would be the one to carry me around the yard during my fussy early summer evenings. I imagine it being hot, my mother worn out by my sister and me, a dinner that was making up its mind about how it would turn out, and a dog running in circles. Everything was fine in the all-American dream, but yet I cried on, as my sister had done before me. As have all the babies who, ungratefully, were walked up and down yards, streets, alleys, hallways, staircases, elevators, beaches, dirt roads, river banks, and snow drifts.

We all want the babies to stop crying. The babies want to stop, too, although it never feels that way at the time. It feels like they are relishing the sound of their own wail. The crying feels like a problem to solve and I am a problem solver by nature. Maybe my dad sensed that I would go into motherhood high strung and over-identified with the crying baby. He was just telling it to me straight, from one parent to another. There are going to be times when there is nothing precisely wrong, and so there is nothing precisely right to be done.

The same is true for self-expression. There really is no right way to do it. Sometimes tranquil silence is the blessing of a quiet state of mind, expressed like mother's milk, sufficient and plenteous. But, as a writer, I'm never sated, never satisfied with it. Clamorous thoughts and emotions rise up and create tension, which in turn creates a problem. I thought this tension itself was my problem until I read:

A creative writer is one for whom writing is a problem. -- Roland Barthe

This explained to me my constant need to come back to writing, over and over again, since the time I first saw my mother draw pictures on a piece of paper and write their names under them with a red felt-tip pen. The outline of a coat with fur trim and then beneath, a tight, round bond of letters suddenly fused with her real coat. These letters meant my mother's coat. How could this be? It was like torture, this newfound joy. And thus, my problem was born.

However, my writing projects feel nothing like caring for a baby, even though that analogy gets overused-- that our work is "our baby". Yes, we create it, but I'm really not worried that something I wrote is going to get sick or break itself or fall in with the wrong crowd. I am not writing a baby into life to look after and coax and cajole into independence and recognition.

In my act of writing, I am the baby. The writing is tending to me. The writing is something I need to do to be well, to be engaged with life, to be fed, to explore, to be nurtured. When I write, I'm the one getting walked around the yard, or through the hairpin turns of of my mind. The writing is always there for me, thankfully, because I'm a writer, and writers are going to cry.

And Bono will tell it to you straight, from one person to another: Sometimes You Can't Make it On Your Own 

Tough, you think you've got the stuff
You're telling me and anyone
You're hard enough

You don't have to put up a fight
You don't have to always be right
Let me take some of the punches
For you tonight

Listen to me now
I need to let you know
You don't have to go it alone

And it's you when I look in the mirror
And it's you when I don't pick up the phone
Sometimes you can't make it on your own

We fight all the time
You and I that's alright
We're the same soul

I don't need, I don't need to hear you say
That if we weren't so alike
You'd like me a whole lot more

Listen to me now
I need to let you know
You don't have to go it alone

And it's you when I look in the mirror
And it's you when I don't pick up the phone
Sometimes you can't make it on your own

I know that we don't talk
I'm sick of it all
Can you hear me when I sing?
You're the reason I sing
You're the reason why the opera is in me

Hey now
Still gotta let you know
A house does not make a home
Don't leave me here alone

And it's you when I look in the mirror
And it's you that makes it hard to let go
Sometimes you can't make it on your own
Sometimes you can't make it
The best you can do is to fake it
Sometimes you can't make it on your own

Exceptional Excerpts: Sophie's Choice

"Providentially, though, it was music that helped save her, as it had in the past. On the fifth or sixth day-- she recalled only that it was a Saturday-- she awoke after a restless night filled with confused, menacing dreams and as if by old habit stretched out her hand and switched on the tiny Zenith radio which she kept on her bedside table. She had not meant to, it was simple reflex; the reason she had shut music out during these days of malignant depression was that she had found she could not bear the contrast between the abstract yet immeasurable beauty of music and the almost touchable dimensions of her own aching despair. But unknown to herself, she must have been open and receptive to the mysteriously therapeutic powers of W.A. Mozart, M.D., for the very first phrases of the music-- the great Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat major-- caused her to shiver all over with uncomplicated delight. And suddenly she knew why this was so, why this sonorous and noble statement so filled with peculiar, chilling dissonances should flood her spirit with relief and recognition and joy. For aside from its intrinsic loveliness, it was a work whose very identity she had sought for ten years. She had been smitten nearly mad with the piece when an ensemble from Vienna had visited Cracow a year or so before the Anschluss. Sitting in the concert hall, she had listened to the fresh new work as in a trance, and let the casements and doors of her mind swing wide to admit the luxuriant, enlaced and fretted harmonies, and those wild dissonances, inexhaustibly inspired. At a time of her early youth made up of the perpetual discovery of musical treasures, this was a treasure newly minted and supreme. Yet she never heard the piece again, for like everything else the Sinfonia Concertante and Mozart, and the plaintive sweet dialogue between violin and viola, and the flutes, the strings, the dark-throated horns were all blown away on the war's wind in a Poland so barren, so smothered with evil and destruction that the very notion of music was a ludicrous excrescence.

Author William Styron, former U.S. Marine during WWII

"So in those years of cacophony in bombed-out Warsaw, and later at the camp, the memory of that work faded, even the title, which she ultimately confused with the titles of other pieces of music she had known and loved in time long past, until all that was left was a blurred but exquisite recollection of a moment of unrecapturable bliss, in Cracow, in another era. But in her room that morning the work, joyously blaring through the plastic larynx of the cheap little radio, brought her abruptly upright with quickened heartbeat and with an unfamiliar sensation around her mouth which she realized was a smile. For minutes she sat there listening, smiling, chilled, ravished while the unrecapturable became captured and slowly began to melt her fierce anguish. Then when the music was finished, and she had carefully written down the name of the work as the announcer described it, she went to the window and raised the blind. Gazing out at the baseball diamond at the edge of the park, she found herself wondering if she would ever have enough money to buy a phonograph and a recording of the Sinfonia Concertante and then realized that such a thought in itself meant that she was coming out of the shadows."

We have the ability to find our own musical medicine at any time. Let's enjoy Sophie's-- it truly is a sweet back and forth between instruments. Let's also remember any kind of music that has ever brought us back to our smiling, melted selves. Your special elixir will be yours to discover and recapture.

 

Dirty Poems

No, really, they're about dirt. An ecologist and poet friend of mine wrote about soil and its connection to her soul-- how interchangeable these words are to her-- as if they are the same. This led me to go digging into my own soil for poems I had written that feel ready to shoot up. 

Soma in Darkness

Why doesn't darkness cover me like pitch? 

Why does it feel more clear and bright 

than most luminous things around me? 

A lampshade, a glass vase of island flowers, 

a hovering fish in a bowl--left behind by my daughter--

all alit on my desk by the window for a time. 

These glow in the slant of afternoon,

yet they become obscure 

as the night grows more crystalline. 

My heart beats more sure of itself

as dusky atoms hint at the hidden.

The dark is less suspect in its muffled alibis

than all of the claims each daybreak

has laid upon me.

Yesterday, the fish perished an ignoble death, 

gruesome in the way small fish sicken and die, 

but not before I tried to euthanize it 

in a misguided fashion with

sodium bicarbonate and vodka. 

The passing was a struggle

and not the promised instantaneous and painless.

Promises like the bubbles he often blew--

as a proud Siamese Fighting Fish does--

gathering one after another before they pop,

waiting for a female to drift by, to trap her eggs.

Even while he lived alone and trapped,

menaced by his own reflection,

still he functioned and formed his beaded nests,

instinct driving harder than hope.

The bowl, water, meal worms, medicine,

all are gone now.

A week ago, he was fanning out 

in his red and blue fineness,

sure of his purpose in nomine patris,

but yesterday he was diminished 

to a gray charcoal, muted, gasping. 

I plucked one of the wilting flowers 

out of the witnessing vase, a faded coral lily,

the one he'd have stared and gaped at.

After one scoop, I lay him under a tree, 

and left the silent bloom,

given a new life as proffered gift--

inspired by guilt, perhaps, as flowers often are--

from gracious home decor to memento mori.

His existence on my desk was a fact, 

as is his disintegration, 

as is the now drooping bouquet.

I cannot count on these-- 

and much less on my antique typewriter,

also a gift, iron in its stance

and older than myself-- to be more real 

than this disquiet mind 

that solidifies its knowledge 

and intent from firmament into a fist

that cannot hasten death any more than

it can prevent it in this room 

of the easily identifiable.

The fish is free to lie in the earth, 

the flower caresses it, while I 

somehow manage to walk away from them, 

feet not quite in shoes, shoes not quite on grass. 

I glide above it all, rarefied in an exquisite beam

that knows its own painful brightness. 

This light wants to dazzle me away 

from loamy dampness,

tempting me to look at a sungod in full glory,

only to be singed ashen, or salted and pilloried.

In living, I must insist that my presence here is

stamped, no longer invalid with each independent step. 

I would rather know how

can I descend to the darkness 

which is my heart's desire 

to join them, fish and flower.

Lying down and covering myself

with dirt and bark is the same as 

settling on my desk at night

under its face-down papers,

barely aware of the glistenings of day

that keep me wilting and gasping.

I want to turn away, not from life, but deeper into it, 

curling into its very mouth,

as it rolls me over its tongue, and decides.

                                             -- lb 2011

Water Lily by Alice Pike Barney, 1900

Love Puts Us in the Ground

Transcendence is for the birds.

The sky is their home away

from all homes, all rooted loves.

If you want love always

then trade in your wings

for a spade and a hindrance of earth,

If you want a home forever,

roof it over out of the sun,

stuff and furnish

until you shoulder

it up like Atlas 

with each passing year

If you want beauty

to never leave your skin

or your side

tend to the birds

who perch in a line

along this roof

but you will be left behind

in their perfected launch

Love puts us in the ground,

sets us back on our heels,

back down to earth

to feel the grass between 

our fingers, 

the moss beneath us,

ashen mud and beetles.

Love puts us deep in it. 

There are no lofty heights

without soil, no clouds

without leaves fallen and

clinging to our wet limbs.

A snail knows this well 

as it is caught up in the beak

Only when the leaves, grass, moss 

are dried out, can the wind

whistle through us. 

Until then, we cling, we let go, we grasp, we release.

As it should be. 

So says the frog who 

tongue-snaps and leaps,

and the snake

who coils and sheds.

But make no mistake,

do not be misled:

Love will not lift up, 

will not find you a celestial nest.

Love will not hoist you, me, anyone

to relentless bliss above the rest.

So says I of mean estate,

The Law of Love puts us in the ground

And to it we run.

                                          -- lb 2011

To Build a Fire, Stand Back or Move In

My writing professor and mentor Jonathan Penner often shared a helpful analogy that has always stayed with me. He said that one kind of person builds a big fire and then stands far back from it. Another kind of person builds a small fire and moves in close to it. A good writer, he said, is like the second kind. I think I might add onto this: a great writer knows how to do both and when. 

This idea applies to many areas of life. There are times when we have to make a grand gesture or pour on effort, and the fruition of these larger endeavors has a through-line of intense focus and concentration. If it all looks like it's killing us, then we're probably fairly new at it, and not as controlled and efficient as we could be. If it looks effortless, it still might nearly kill us, but we did it with those terrific descriptors, aplomb and élan.

"Function in Disaster, Finish in Style" 
 -- unofficial motto of New York's Medeira School for Girls as described by alum Stockard Channing

Official motto: Make Haste Slowly

There have been many times when I have felt a bit desperate to solve a problem or to get unstuck, and kept gathering and stockpiling ideas, but did not really give them enough time or attention. Or I turned to past solutions that were no longer fitting and threw them on the fire for good measure, but thoughtlessly. 

In this mental or physical hyperactive state, I start to feel self-conscious, as if I'm being watched by the gods and they are laughing at my feeble humanity. My careless fire is growing and heat is spreading, but I am no closer to the meaningful and sustaining solution that I need. Its power self-combusts in graceless mini-explosions. I played with fire--just to be doing something, anything--and had simply generated a temporary bonfire that burned out quickly.

My personal firestorms usually aren't destructive on the surface. During a crisis, I'm usually in survival mode, so those conflagrations tend to be fueled with too much information, hope, anxiety, rigidity, casting about, faithlessness, panic, anger, indignation, despondency and helplessness, all while trying to keep it together. In other words, a hot mess of resolve without substance or strategy.

Sometimes I have had the great good fortune to have a person come into my heat zone, willing to help me contain it, to release me from all of my brain's cross-talk, and to guide me toward a good direction. These people all seem to be the kind that can step toward a big fire and see how it is really several small fires crowded together. They have moved in on these smaller fires many times and have experience tending to them. They know how to create breaks and walls, and they know what should be left alone until it dies down on its own.

What these merciful angels don't do is take charge. They aren't trying to stamp out all that is wrong, until my energy turns passive and ineffective. They just listen and stay with me until the containment is down to a hearth, one that I can move into closely, with consideration and experimentation until it is a lasting source of creative solutions.

One way to keep your heart's fire burning or "functioning in disaster", is to remember the generous and patient people who walked through the heat with you. As a part of following your passion, keep close the ones who help you tender your devotion to it as the necessary and skilled fellows they are. Your passion, if it is to be both good and for the good, deserves their helpful attention. As they assist you, you will learn from them how to "finish in style" and will be, in turn, a boon to others you come alongside.

Coincidentally, a former headmistress of the Madeira School for girls lives out the difference between devotion and obsession. Her passion for the doctor of The Scarsdale Diet fame becomes lurid and violent as she keeps throwing logs on the fire. Truth is stranger than pulp fiction.

ORIGINS: Women's Magazines

I ran across a curious piece on the genesis of the popular magazines we see in the racks near the checkout line in supermarkets. My daughter had asked me the meaning of the phrase "pulp fiction", so I began an online search for examples of publications that printed commercial tales to modern readers. From this, I learned about the role that pulp played in the rise of the glossy.

Women's magazines started out as places for many authors to have their stories published to a wider audience; stories that were not yet considered literature and perhaps even trashy by the starched and corseted standard-bearers of good taste. But some of the starched and corseted were also reading these magazines for the fantasies they inspired.

The RedBook Magazine, July 1913

One such magazine was called The Red Book Illustrated, first published in 1903. Over the next several years it featured stories by both men and women such as Jack London, Edith Wharton, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Agatha Christie and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Photos and illustrations of actors and actresses and other notable personalities helped to make the magazine a quick success with a wide readership.

Soon two more publications were introduced, The Blue Book and The Green Book. The Blue Book carried a supplement called "Stageland" on various actors of the theater. The covers of these books also showcased early graphic art and illustrations by aspiring artists. The Blue Book ran for 45 years, titled Blue Book of Fiction and Adventure, Bluebook for Men, and was finally shortened, like Redbook, to Bluebook, until its last issue in 1975.

The Blue Book Magazine, "Stageland" supplemental, August 1911

In 1932, Redbook's publisher broke into producing serial stories on radio, called Redbook Magazine Radio Dramas, with a host who selected the stories. As television began to attract people to viewing stories, over reading or listening to them, magazines changed both their focus and demographic. They began to include nonfiction articles on issues of the day, such as racial prejudice, nuclear weapons, and McCarthyism. By the 1960s, Redbook focused on a female readership and highlighted Dr. Benjamin Spock and Margaret Mead on the topics of childrearing and women's rights, along with its core of fiction. Around this time it began to win National Magazine awards.

By the 1970s, Redbook changed hands and became a member of what was called "The Seven Sisters" of magazines, named after the constellation Pleiades, which included Good Housekeeping, Better Homes and Gardens, Family Circle, Woman's Day, Ladies' Home Journal and McCall's.

Each magazine had a different inception and history. Family Circle and Woman's Day were both circulars for grocery stores, Good Housekeeping was aimed at homemakers, Lady's Home Journal was general interest, and Better Homes and Gardens introduced home design for the affluent. McCall's was similar to Redbook in its format of quality fiction, written by Ray Bradbury, Willa Cather, John Steinbeck, Anne Tyler and Kurt Vonnegut. 

McCall's Fashion 1916

McCall's was also a means of advertising the fashion designs and sewing patterns of its owner, James McCall, a Scottish immigrant. In the 'Thirties, McCall's was divided into three sections: News and Fiction, Homemaking, Style and Beauty. Starting in the 'Fifties, it included a regular character of a little girl named Betsy McCall, a paper doll accompanied by pages of cut-out fashionable clothing. Also keeping up with the demand for fiction at the time, McCall's was the first women's magazine to print a complete novel in one issue.

Redbook again changed its focus in the 1990s to appeal to a large audience of young women who were less interested in fiction and more interested in articles about balancing home and work life. The featured stories were accounts of married women dealing with modern problems who sought to overcome them and achieve intellectual, personal and political growth with an emphasis on humanitarian causes.

This format carried over into other magazines currently owned by the Hearst Corporation such as Harper's Bazaar, Elle, and O, the Oprah Magazine. Whether the readers subscribe to pulpy serials full of fantastical creatures, or spend hours fantasizing about the lifestyles of celebrities, women's magazines have had a solid footing in the descent of the author and in the current of mainstream thoughts and practices.