Mireille Guiliano on NPR

Some of you will have already heard this, but French Women Don’t Get Fat author (and former CEO of Clicquot, Inc.) Mireille Guiliano was on NPR’s You Must Read This yesterday. It’s a very short audio clip (about 4 minutes long) but very interesting in her take on Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth, particularly the character of Lili Bart. Many of you will be familiar with Mme Guiliano’s bestselling book, of course (and is there a person in America who isn’t?), but while I enjoyed her book (and reviewed its sequel in a previous post) I’m more fascinated by her as a person. Chairman of a huge company — and one owned by LVMH at that — a stylish Frenchwoman, a student of literature, and apparently living in Paris at the time of the 1968 riots? Now why haven’t I heard that story before? Would that some enterprising and original journalist would interview Mme Guiliano about those parts of her life.

Anyway, have a listen if you get the chance. I was interested, of course, in her relationship with this literary character. She has said many times before that she’s an avid reader, and I believe it, now having listened to her discuss Lili Bart. When you become that emotionally invested in a character from a book to the extent that you actually have a relationship with it, you’re definitely a passionate bookworm.

My own favorite book of all time is Of Human Bondage, by Somerset Maugham. I first discovered it while living in Japan. Being in an isolated rural town made me desperate to read anything, even instruction manuals (this was well before the Web and amazon.com). During my infrequent visits to the “big city” every few weeks, I’d stock up on books at the expat library. Of Human Bondage fell into my arms one afternoon — probably because it was long and therefore would occupy more time than, say, a Danielle Steel novel — and I remember reading it on the train home.

I’ve since read it about a half-dozen times and have also read everything else Maugham wrote, including his brilliant short stories. My relationship with the protagonist, Philip Carey, is a complicated one, marked as it is by occasional bouts of frustration and misunderstanding. I think I was initially drawn to him because of his loneliness and sense of isolation, his social awkwardness and longing for love and friendship. When you’re a non-Japanese-speaking foreigner living in a small Japanese town, you tend to live in your head a lot, and that was something Philip and I had in common. Still, his desperate affair with the unresponsive Mildred and his despair at being rejected was something I pitied him for but couldn’t quite grasp, you know? Like Mireille’s feelings toward Lili, I sometimes wanted to grab Philip by his skinny shoulders and yell some sense into him. Dude, she’s just not that into you, okay? Get over it! Maugham’s brilliant writing and sympathetic portrayal of Philip (I read that it’s semi-autobiographical) saves the novel, of course, and in the end I could see — however dimly — how Philip’s extraordinary trials ultimately redeems his lonely self.

Of course, not too long after I returned to the US, I became involved in my own ill-fated romance, one that we modern hipsters would refer to as a dysfunctional relationship. Very Philip-and-Mildred, obviously. And then all of a sudden, voila! The book made sense, and he didn’t seem like the pathetic, whiny character he sometimes came across in my innocent brain.

Have you a literary character you’ve developed a relationship with?

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