First books of 2007

Tom Stoppard: The Real Inspector Hound and After Magritte

I think I did Stoppard a disservice when I read him in college. Of course, it was partly a survival technique to speeze texts in order to get every drop of mening out of them, but now that the pressure is off, I find that meaning is overrated. What has annoyed me at arat shows and museums for ages has now come to annot me about literature as well, namely the hunt for the message. The question should be, "Is it pleasing?". Instead, the question is, "What was the artist trying to say?". Blech. It's art, not an essay. Why does it have to say anything?

Which brings me to these little gems. For all my talk in college about how Stoppard was trying to make a statement about the line between fantasy and reality, or the question of identity, these are really just plain fun. Stoppard himself says that "neither play is about anything grander than itself. A friendly critic described Hound as being as auseful as an ivory Mickey Mouse. After Magritte may be slightly less useful than that . . . the 'role of the theatre' is much debated (by almost nobody, of course), but the thing defines itself in practice first and foremost as recreation. This seems satisfactory."

Li Po and Tu Fu

In preparation for my big project on Ondra Lysohorsky, I picked up this item, works of two authors in one volume. Lysohorsky repeatedly refers to Li Po as a kindred spirit, so I thought there might be some useful insight here. What turned out to be of most interest, though, was not Li Po's work itself, but the side by side comparison of both authors. The editor, the late Arthur Cooper, has cleverly set up a dialectic between the two, framing Li Po as the consummate Taoist poet and his compatriot Tu Fu as a Confucianist master. And the distinction is well observed. The difference in tone, subject matter and style is consistent with the frames into which Cooper has put the two artists.

Which raises the question, to whom can Lysohorsky be similarly compared? Since he and Li Po both stick to the "dream vision" type of poetry, which of his peers is the corresponding Tu Fu? Perhaps W.H. Auden, with whom Lysohorsky carried on a friendship is a candidate, though I would have to look even further to validate such a claim.

Academics aside, as per my earlier post, it is interesting that, although I bought the book to read Li Po, I enjoyed Tu Fu quite a bit more. Both are held in great regard in China, being seen as possibly the greatest poets in millenia of Chinese literature, but I found Li Po's random musings a bit unsatisfying. Where Li Po merely observes something and describes it poetically, Tu Fu draws out the observation, adds his own thoughts, and generally connects to the reader a bit more. It is only natural that the Taoist should have a more relaxed approach, but Li Po's famous five-syllable poems can't help but lose most of their meaning in translation. Or maybe I'm lazy.

Liang Heng and Judith Shapiro: Son of the Revolution

This item falls under the "books I pretended to have read in college" category, but also into the growing trend in my reading habits to read material that focuses on chinese culture. This first-hand account of the events surrounding the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s is neither self-conscious nor melodramatic in its narrative, flaws to which many personal suffering accounts fall prey. At the same time, it seems genuinely sympathetic to the reforms enacted by Deng Xiaoping, and ends on a note that does not criticize the Chinese givernment, a surprising move that may have been politically motivated but keeps the book from wallowing. The only fault that I can relate is that it is a bit shallow and light, so caveat emptor.

Final Post of 2006

Exodus

Reading this book was enough to convince me of two things. Firstly, I don't relaly feel like reading the Bible for a while. Secondly, the god of the Bible, whoever whatever he is, is a racist, misogynist, bloodthirsty, unworshippable demon.

Geraldine Brooks: March

It's amazing the sort of amateurish, preachy nonsense will net the author a Pulitzer. As I read this, I couldn't help but think that everyone is excessively noble: the title character, the slaves whom he attempts to help, even the children are all self-sacrificing, idealogical, and utter caricatures. I kept hoping that Brooks wasn't serious, that she didn't really mean for the reader to accept these ludicrous characters--especially since she took the bilious liberty of appropriating characters from Little Women. I kept expecting it to take a turn for the cynical, and therby transform into an interesting parody of historical fiction, but I waited in vain. Nobody is this noble. Even the obligatory flaws in the characters were noble flaws. It felt like interviewing a job applicant, and when asked the question, "What do you see as your chief fault?" having them answer, "I work too hard."

Lin Yutang: The Importance of Living

I am really beginning to trust Phillip Ward's Lifetime of Reading. He has clued me in to some wonderful volumes, and this is among them. He has a remarkable gift for expressing the Chinese mentality in Western terms and putting life and religion in perspective. A proud pagan, Lin makes such cleansing observations as "I consider the education of our senses and our e3motions rather more important than the education of our ideas," and The trouble with orthodox religion is that , in its process of historical development, it got mixed up with a number of things strictly outside religion's moral realm--physics, geology, the conception of sex and woman."

The book is, as I percieve it, divided into three parts: one useful, one detestable, and one sublime. One of the most useful functions Lin performs is to summarize the high points of Chinese thought. This is not so useful as a replacement for stusy,, but rather to clue the reader in to ancient masters with whom he or she might have a special affinity. As for me, I felt drawn to "The Philosophy of Half and Half," a "compounding of Taoist cynicism with a Confucian positive outlook" by Conficius' descendant Tsesse. After all, as pure and truthful as the path of the Tao is, a life lived in seclusion is no life at all. This balanced outlook fits nicely with Lin's summary of the healthy Chinese national character: a playful curiosity mixed with a healthy sense of humor and a habit of dreaming, along with a tendency to be wayward, or a bit of a scamp.

Lin takes a turn for the unpleasant whenever he dwells on the specific pleasures of life. He tries to hide his sexism with such revealing arguments as "Conversation is always pleasantly stimlulated when there are a few ladies who know how to listen and look sweetly pensive". And his list of the most rewarding activities one can pursue includes sitting around, sleeping in, and smoking at every opportunity. I think I shall choose to forget these passages exist.

But, despite these glaring flaws, Lin occasionally touches on the sublime, and I think I shall always be influenced by his advice to search for the writer with whom I have a special affinity and treat him [or her. grrr.] like a lover. Needless to say, mine is not Lin Yutang.

Ondra Lysohorsky: In the Eye of the Storm

One of my New Year's resolutions is to write this book up in the manner it deserves. To do this will require more thought and research than I have given it at present.

BTD, 2006: 67

Don't Judge Me.

Yes, I have not been reading lately and am, therefore, a bad person. But you simply don't realize how time consuming being a teacher is. If you count the 500 papers I have to grade every week, I have been doing more reading than you.

Richard Russo: Empire Falls

this book got off to an amazing, hopeful start, which made the sluggish, awkward middle that much more disappointing. Russo clearly has a great grasp of what makes literature. The book is packed with nice imagery, layered meaning, and tightly packed themes that make one wish it was better written. I watched a painful travesty of a play the other night, one that stemmed from the abortive notion that being a theater critic makes one qualified to also write plays. David Skolnick, by the way. Miss it at all costs. But Empire Falls suffers from a similar problem. Russo simply can't write believable dialogue. Every time a character opens his or her mouth, one gets the impression that Empire Falls is peopled with greeting card writers. Thank goodness that the book ended on as powerful a note as it began. If one can overlook the writing and focus on the content, Empire Falls is a real delight.

Toni Morrison: The Bluest Eye

I was supposed to have read this in college. Better late than never. Although the book is wonderfully epigrammatic and powerfully vivd, I can't help but agree with Morrison's own criticism of it. It doesn't quite work the way she wanted it to, she writes in the Afterword. The broken structure doesn't come create the effect she intended, and the theme is just short of consistent. Still, I don't regret reading it for an instant, and would do so again, which is a rare compliment.

Genesis

I am astonished at all that I failed to recognize when reading this as a fundamentalist. These men are nasty, greedy, vindictive, lustful liars. Whose idea was it to emulate them? This said with the exception of Joseph, whose powers of divination would have gotten him excommunicated in the church where I grew up.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson: English Idyls and Other Poems

I could go on at length about the rich variety of love about which Tennyson writes, or about the sincerity of his passion, or the seeming ease with which he writes in the voice of characters wildly different in background, occupation and gender from hhis own. But it would be exhausting. If anything, I lke Tennyson too much. When I teach poetry to my students next semester, I anticipate that he will appear in the curriculum more often than is probably wise.

I will offer this obscure excerpt, appropriate as it is to the current political climate:

That these two parties still divide the world--
Of those that want, and those that have; and still
The same old sore breaks out from age to age
With much the same result.
(Walking to the Mail)

And this one, to which I personally relate:
Let this avail, just, dreaful, mighty God,
This not be all in vain, that thrice ten years,
Thrice multiplied by superhuman pangs,
In hungers and in thirsts, fevers and cold,
In coughs and aches, stiches, ulcerous throes and cramps,
A sign betwixt the meadow and the cloud
Patient on this tall pillar I have borne.
(Saint Simeon Stylites)

BTD: 63. At least I've read more than a book a week. Don't judge me.

Menage a Quatre

Truman Capote: In Cold Blood

Sister should have stuck to being a journalist. This book has all the markings of a Sunday Times Supplement stretched out to book length. Which is not to say that the topic is uninteresting, simply that turning it into a novel made it seem hokey and forced. The least he could have done is give it some recurring theme, but all he managed to do was color inside the lines that were already there.

4 Maccabees

It is especially interesting to read parallel accounts of the same event. I'm not sure Jesus would have turned out to be such a celebrity if we had only one man's version of his life, but we have four and Voila! A rock star is born. It is, by the same token, interesting to reread the account of seven young men's brutal but inspiring deaths from 2 Maccabees from a different perspective. I don't mean to imply that there was another eyewitness to the fact--it is likely mythical. Rather, it is interesting to see the shift from Hebrew mysticism to Greek rationalism, and how it affects the telling of a story. In 2 Maccabees, the youths' deaths are inspiring as examples of faith, a la Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah. But in this later, more Greek version, the story is almost told as a Socratic dialogue, the purpose of which is to demonstrate the superiority of reason over emotion. And form meets function here, for the second telling is sterile, rational, and uneffacing.

William Shakespeare: The Comedy of Errors

This was a pleasant surprise. I expected another irritating, convoluted comedy along the lines of Twelfth Night, but instead found a clear plot and enough layered meaning to interest a scholar without hindering a casual observer. I especially liked the symbolism of the chain, and should really reread the play to see how the possesion of the chain affects each character. My working theory of Shakespeare is that each play exists in an alternate universe with slightly different rules of physics. In The Comedy of Errors, as in no other Shakespearean play that I can make mention of, the rule is rhyming=proximity. The closer a character is to another, the more likely he or she is to rhyme while speaking to him or her. In fact, rhyming becomes a game, especially between siblings. I'm not sure why that's important, but it certainly gives the play more tint :)

Jack Shaeffer: Shane

I read this book back when I was in middle school, and now I'm having my students read it. What better time to revisit an old friend? As I remembered, it is a well written book, but I certainly don't remember all the sexual tension between the three adults in the book. Is there a doctoral thesis in there somewhere?

Maxim Gorky: The Lower Depths and Other Plays

Maxim Gorky is to Anton Chekov as Vaclav Havel is to Samuel Beckett. That is to say, he does what Chekov does well--perhaps with a bit less flair--, but refrains from what makes Chekov annoying. In the case of Havel and Beckett, just to illustrate, Havel uses the absurdly meaningless to create deep meaning just as Beckett does, but doesn't infuriate the reader/viewer with seemingly arbitrary stupidity.

Most would agree that Chekov is king of complex characterization, but I would put Gorky only slightly lower on that scale. His people are so delightfully epigrammatic and layered, and, as in Chekov, each sentence is pointed and revealing. At the same time, Gorky's work doesn't seem to feel so ponderous and unresolved as Chekov's. While carrying the same hint of the fundamental distance between people, he also has something to say about Russian culture without being apocalyptic. The idea that flows throughout the three plays in this collection is that peole, particularly Russian people, "live in a convulsion of ideas" (The Zykovs, act II). In Russia, "everything is caught on the wing". As a result, Tatyana in Enemies comments that life is "an amateur performance--the parts are badly cast, there are players of no talent, the acting is terrible-- and you can't make out what the script is all about" (Act I). Who has not felt like this? Well done, Gorky. Now cut back on the profusion of characters and you'll have a resurgence that will leave Eugene O'neill in the dust.

BTD:55

Catchy Heading

Aristotle: De Poetica

I read this little item in anticipation of a stagecraft workshop I went to recently. I have worked with the speaker, Tom Lindblade, before and he is the best director I have ever met. He insists, as part of his directorial approach, that all theater, and in particular all acting, begins with Aristotle's Poetics. Naturally, I wanted to read more so that I would understand what he would speak about at this workshop. Imagine my surprise at learning that this supposedly seminal work is only thirty pages long. Furthermore, it spends the bulk of those scant pages iterating the difference between comedy and tragedy, between epic and dramatic poetry, and making other trivial distinctions. The one piece of useful information I gleaned was that the plot--or as Stanislavsky later clarified, the intention--is the first thing about any theatrical work. Second in importance is the character, followed by the thought or, in more modern terms, the meaning, the diction or language, and the song, which I take to mean the artistic embellishments. I believe this to be an entirely accurate and helpful hierarchy. As an actor, I tend to put the character first--ending up with what amounts to a caricature. An as an English major, I tend to consider the thought and the diction next in importance. It would probably be helpful not to ignore that which Aristotle thought most significant.

David Edmonds and John Eidinow: Wittgenstein's Poker

I suppose I should give this book a demerit for false advertising. I expected it to contain, as it claimed, an account of the notorious clash between philosophers Karl Popper and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Instead, all it has to say about the eponymous event is that nobody really knows what was said, although Popper seemed to think he emerged from the encounter victoriously.

Which is not to say that the book was without interest entirely, simply that it contained little philosophy. Instead, it detailed the very interesting personal histories of the two men, highlighting the many parallels. For instance, both were of Jewish descent and living in Vienna near the time of the Anschluss. The primary difference lay in the fact that the Wittgensteins were the Rockefellers of Austria-Hungary, and the Poppers were only respectably middle class. It is no wonder that Popper seemed to hold a personal vendetta against Wittgenstein when one considers that the former lost many family members during the holocaust and that the latter's family was able to preserve itself with its vast wealth.

And I suppose I did learn a bit about the two men's respective philosphies. Popper seemed preoccupied with so-called philosophical problems, such as that of induction, while Wittgenstein insisted that such problems did not exist and were simply tricks of language. I suppose neither side is particularly interesting to me, since I fail to see the practical relevance of such arguments. I am more of a Utilitarian, if you care about labels. I will say this for Ludwig, though. The point of philospohy may indeed be, as he put it, "To show the fly the way out of the bottle."

1 Esdras

What can one say about those books of the Bible which I call the list-books. Numbers, Leviticus, and likewise 1 Esdras, are so largely compsed of family lineages that any message they carry is almost completely obscured. I will say this: those glimpses of the man Ezra which the book grants are nice additions and serve as flavor to earlier books where he is only briefly outlined.

The Prayer of Manasseh

By the same token, this fleeting glimpse into one of my favorite characters in the Bible is savory indeed.

Psalm 151

One wonders if a Hebrew copyist simply limited the book of Psalms to 150 because he had OCD. Whether authentically written by David or not, this addition is touching and meaningful.

3 Maccabees

In the parable of the ungrateful slave, the character Christ spoke of a servant who was forgiven an enormous debt and subsequently raged against a fellow slave who owed him comparatively little. Although I'm sure the book of 3 Maccabees was not meant to paint the Israelites in such a light, such was the effect on this reader. Rescued by their God from imminent eradication (again), they pivot on one foot and execute all those of their number who "transgressed the divine commandments" (7:11). Not only is this the same kind of elitism from which they were rescued, but their reasoning is the same as their persecutors'. The Israelites were accused of being subversive due to "the ill-will [they] had toward all nations" (7:4). Their accusation against those of their own number was that "they would never be favorably disposed toward the king's government" (7:11). What ungrateful slaves. I would have smitten them if I was God.

2 Esdras

"And now I see that the world to come will bring delight to few, but torments to many" (7:47). This objection of Ezra to his prophetic visions is a persistent theme through 2 Esdras, and one never fully answered. The allegorical wild beats shown to Ezra, while of the same flavor as those shown to Daniel and John, are never explicated. God was kind enough to tell Daniel that the four-headed leopard meant Greece, the goat Medo-Persia, etc. But Ezra seems to awake from his visions confused. How frustrating it must have been to hear as the answer to his plea for understanding, "If, therefore, you will pray again and fast again for seven days, I will again declare to you things greater than these" (6:31). Always the angel Uriel replies with an instruction to fast for seven more days. At least on the fourth set of seven days, by which point Ezra must have been famished, the angel allowed him to eat wildflowers. But the answer is never given. Why must the vast majority of mankind be destroyed in the fiery wrath of a vengeful God? Are not all men equally guilty? "Quite so, Ezra," seems to be the reply. "But why?" he asks. "Quite so, Ezra."

BTD:54

Imre Kertesz: Fateless

I bought this book five years ago during a short-lived period of determination to read a work by every Nobel laureate. As usual, I didn't read it until I was meant to. Kertesz's work resonates with recent experiences of my own as it could not possibly have years ago.

To be specific, the numb terror of internment as Kertesz writes it is so accurate as to inspire pungent, nearly post-traumatic stressful memories on my part. The wound on Georg's leg, the morbid task of milking pus out of it daily to prevent infection, and especially the frustrating notion of hobbling on an unresponsive, doomed leg, are all within my own memory, and quite accurate. Which is not to praise the book in general, only to say that I related to it.

As to whether it was a worthwhile read, as opposed to merely another concentration camp memoir, I must say yes. The first thing that elevates it above that latter, compelling but meaningless, category is Kertesz's choice to write his own experience through a fictional person. Kertesz was himself imprisoned in Auschwitz as a boy, but he does not write about himself. Instead, he writes in the voice of Georg, a Hungarian boy of Jewish descent. This choice frees him to write a novel, not simpy of horror, but of philosophical merit. All around him, fellow prisoners are bewailing their fate, but Georg, who doesn't come from a religious family, has no frame of reference for this term. The brilliant recurring device of "The man with the bad luck," unimportant to the plot but crucial to the meaning, is the first hint of Kertesz's intention. He means, as one should have gleaned from the title, is to write a novel, not about concentration camps, but about the nature of fate. Perhaps the Jews are being punished for the sins of their race. Perhaps the horror of the concentration camps is unavoidable. Or is there some other answer?

Georg's youth grants him a unique capacity to answer this question. He often reminds the reader that he does not know what (such and such an experience) means. He is not concerned with meaning, per se. He simply reports his experiences as they occur, that is, until the final, brilliant chapter. "Do you want all this horror and all my previous steps to lose their meaning entirely?" he asks adults who insist upon his return to Budapest that all is fated. Why can't you see that if there is fate then there is no such thing as freedom . . . that is, we ourselves are fate?" The adults are, of course, horrified. How could people themselves be held responsible for their own persecution and extermination? "The point," Georg explains, "Is in the steps. Everyone stepped forward as long as he could . . . Now there is no other blood, and there is nothing but given situations and concomitant givens within them" (188,189). Here Kertesz finally reveals himself. Surely this is not fourteen year old Georg speaking at all. I mean really, concomitant? And what he says is ponderous. There is no fate. Only steps. The only thing to do, no matter how terrible the stench, how painful the pressure, is to put one stump in front of the other.

John Shelby Spong: Why Christianity Must Change or Die

I don't know why I should feel self-conscious when I fail to post here regularly. It's not like anybody reads this anymore. I will say this, though: the longer I wait after actually reading a book before writing anything about it, the less I have to say. When I orginally finished this particular book, I felt that I had volumes to say. But now it is all encapsulable in one saying from Spong's own Christian lexicon: new wine in old wineskins.

I don't fault Spong for phrasing the debate over the death of God in terms of his own staunch Christianity. He (understandably) feels compelled to reassert his own faith, perhaps anticipating criticism, perhaps vainly trying to convince himself. He admits that his persistent call to reform the Christian Church is a result of his own passage thorugh "the door of Christ," and his attachment to that path. But he also allows, "I will never again assert that my Christ is the only way to God" (239).

This is precisely the opening I need. You see, unlike Spong, I have no attachment to the path of Christianity. I have been trying to fit my own spirituality into that mold for some time, but it no longer seems necessary. I have not walked through the "Christ doorway," as Spong puts it, and have no desire to. It makes no sense to me, and the form of Christianity Spong proposes in this book may as well bear a different name entirely. He forces the truth about being into an old mold that will no longer bear it.

I will offer this commendation: Spong manages to capture a key to a central dilemma of worship. People fret over the "Will of God," and other such nonsense, when God is not a being. He is being itself. The God one must worship (although occasionally it helps, for sake of reference, to act as if God is a person) is the "source of life, the source of love, and the ground of all being." This is Spong's repeated framework for the divine, and it serves nicely, along with the accompanying exhortation to "Live fully, love wastefully, and enter into the fullness of being." that is a message into which I can jump with confidence.

Happy Berfday @ Me!

2 Maccabees

Surprisingly, this is not a sequel to 1 Maccabees, but a concurrent account from a different perspective. For one thing, the fighting is enhanced by the presence of golden, angelic warriors--always a nice touch--but for another, the tone is completely different. The language betrays a more modern authorship, using terms such as 'Judaism' and 'Hellenization,' which I don't remember anywhere else in the Bible. The best part, however, is that it fills in the gaps in the narrative of the family Maccabeus, specifically the area around the leadership of Judas. One of these day, in my abundant spare time, whe I've run out of other things to read--I'm going to go back and read all four Maccabees simultaneously.

Donald Marguilies: Dinner With Friends

I have a suspicion this would be a delight to perform, as it was to read. The characters are complex, layered, believable creations, although, as with most character-driven pieces, the plot is, well, there isn't one. As far as theme, I'm not sure whether I can get on board with Margulies' take on marriage/relationships. He implicitly sides with the happily--if awkwardly--married couple, as opposed to the happily separating couple. How do I feel about marriage again? I can't remember if I'm for or against it. On the one hand, it would certainly be nice to have a big party celebratin one's relationship, but on the other hand no relationship is forever. Except your mom, that is. By the way, she says to say hi. Is there some sort of balance to be struck? Some sort of "Marriage for Now" ceremony?

Tom Stoppard: Hapgood

Fooking brilliant. Bridges of Konisberg. Quantum physics. Must be read to be believed.

BTD:47

Hans Gombrich: The Story of Art

I love Gombrich's opening quote: "There is no such thing as Art, only artists." In one of the later appendices, Gombrich retracts this powerful statment, supposing that when first written it gave people license to mislabel rubbish as Art. The story of art (as opposed to Art) is the story of reactions, artists solving and inventing problems of representation in response to the approaches of their forbears. The current dilemma, as Gombrich sees it, lies in the lack of problems. The counterculture, rebellious nature of art has lost its force, since the very disgust a piece elicits may serve to qualify it as Art in the minds of some. Art criticism, therefore, has ground to a halt, as anything can go and the repellent or clumsy aspects of a piece may simply be included in the artist's overall vision. "Where can art go from here?" he seems to ask.

But it is revealling to analyze Gombrich's summary of art on a basic level. The fundamental questions of art are, "What to represent?" and "How to represent it?" The former is, in my mind the more interesting of the two, as the latter can be seen as a function of technique and materials. But what to paint/sculpt/defecate is a fascinating question. I don't mean to say that the the oscillation between religious and secular topics is interesting. Rather, artists have been asking themselves whether to paint what one knows or what one sees (or, more recently, what one feels) since the very beginning. Raphael vs. DaVinci, Carraci vs. Carravaggio, Reynolds vs. Gainsborough, Turner vs. Constable, Monet et al vs. Cezanne, and other fascinating comparisons highlight this fundamental question. Does one focus on the visual effect of seeing and faithfulness to nature, or on the ideal concepts of beauty and symbolism? For that matter, why not, as per Kandinsky, paint something completely internal?

If this is the fundamental question of art, it is by no means solved. The solution would, of course, be a synthesis of the two methods, some way of representation that conveys the truth of something both according to the eye and according to the mind. Bewailing the state of art, albeit warranted when a cross in a jar of urine is haute couture, is unwarranted in the larger scheme. Such a synthesis has not been reached (and cannot be), so art will continue to evolve and fascinate the public.

Octavio Paz: Poemas Prontos

Allow me to begin by saying that I am out of my depth here. I don't mean to say that the Spanish is beyond me, although it took a while to get used to Paz' vocabulary. His word choice is more varied and precise than either Lorca's or Borges', and I have a feeling some of the subtlety is lost on me. Aside from that minor difficulty, I have to say that I could never write this well. Tennyson, Wordsworth, Borges--I could, under the right circumstances, write what they have written. Not Paz. Oh boy, this is universe-class stuff.

Take, to begin with, his imagery. "Tus hombros tienen la marca de los dientes de amor" (Semillas Para un Himno). Wow! Or, "Cataratas de abejas sobre los ojos mal cerrados" (Mutra). Where would a person come up with this stuff? And it packs every line. I was constantly out of breath with awe at his poetic choices and humbled at the ease with which he amazed me.

And his thematic fearlessness is equally amazing. For Paz, the day in its infinite variety represents the entirety of human experience. While, for most people, the night is simply what separates the days, for Paz it is the opposite. The day represents the "fulgor de agua astancada donde flotan / pequenas [sorry, no tilde] alegrias" (Mascaras del Alba). The day is stagnant, the solitary instant which doesn't end, change, or progress. This is not to say that it is insignificant, merely that it does not serve the function we might ascribe to it. The night, on the other hand, is where the action is. "Es un combate a muerte de inmortales," the shards of which "se buscan en mi frente." (El Rio). All night, the poet drowns in blood, ink, and the alphabet, which become synonomous with one another, the result of which combat is that"el papel se cubra de astros y sea el poema un bosque de palabras enlazadas" (El Rio). The crystal forest which the poem becomes is the only way to escape the perpetual conflict between stagnant day and overwhelming night. We must "descrifar el tatuaje de la noche y mirar cara a cara al mediodia y arrancarla su mascara" (El Cantaro Roto).

And the only worthy path is to"merece lo que suenas," to deserve your dream (Hacia el Poema).

Finished three books in one day. And you just thought I was lazy . . .

Lewis Carroll: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There

Here is a perfect example of what happens when an author gets too big for his britches. Just as Thomas Paine produced a work of genius and promptly became an obnoxiously self-important boor, so Lewis Carroll seems to have taken the success and masterfullness of his first Alice book too seriously and forced a level of literariness on his second book which makes it seem self-conscious and forced. Part of the delight in Wonderland, for me, comes from it's utterly unpretentious lack of structure or explanation. Alice trips dreamily from one scene to the next without exposition and, more importantly, without ever saying that she is in a dream world (although it is understood). The indelible characters, the fabulous puzzles and wordplay, take most of their allure from their complete whimsy.

Not so with Through the Looking Glass. Alice's environment shifts about her very heavyhandedly, as though Carroll is going to some effort in making his story more accurately represent a dreaming state. Also, there is a sense of continuity in the conceit of the chess game that leaves less to the reader's imagination. Perhaps this is why, with the possible esception of the White Knight, all of the characters in the latter Alice volume are quite forgettable. And the White Knight's nice characterization seems to come simply from the moral attached to Alice's encounter with him. In the person of the aging caballero, Charles Dodgson (not Carroll) reminds Alice Liddell, the intended audience, that there is virtue in befriending a pathetic elderly admirer. What a giveaway.

1 Maccabees

Is it possible that the Bible is a treatise on the Tragic Flaw? If so, it is no wonder that this book did not make it into the final canon. The family Maccabeus has none of the dramatic character flaws that make David (lust), Noah (intemperance), Moses (pride), and Paul (just a jerk) such formidable figures. In fact, with the exception of Jesus (open to debate) and Daniel (as you may know, one of my favorites), the heroes of the Bible all seem to suffer from some sort of Greek Theater complex, and are responsible for their own downfall. Not so with the family Maccabeus. Each brother (and presumably, as the narrative continues in 2-4 Maccabees, grandsons et al) is an upright and valorous defender of Truth whose end has nothing to do with his own faults. Booring.

Peter J. Gomes: The Good Book

Reading this book served a double purpose. In the first place, my reading group has placed it upon the altar to be pecked at like a wounded chicken, on top of which I volunteered to lead the discussion on chapters 12-14. Of course, this predicated my actually reading the book, so I did.

In the second, and more relevant place, however, I am still in the process of baking a theology from scratch, (a metaphor of which I'm getting sick), and one of the central questions is, of course, "How much weight to grant the Bible?" My upbringing brought with it a substantial body of Biblical knowledge, although weighted heavily on the side of right-wing morals. As I read the Bible with an open mind for the first time (currently stumbling through 1 Maccabees), I wonder whether to read it as another piece of literature, or to cut some extra slack under the premise that it is inspired in some way. This is the question Gomes purports to answer.

He suggests that the Bible reader approach the text with an intense scholarly scrutiny of difficult texts (homsexuality, Women, etc.) and broad appreciation of the Bible's larger themes (suffering, evil, and temptation). I appreciate his approach, and find it a nice balance of what he calls "Biblical idolatry," that is, worship of the text rather than of God, and strict literary criticism. In practice, however, Gomes presents a watery version of the text that is guilty of the same sort of selective scholarship of which he accuses more conservative parties. He presents a compelling case that homosexuality is not condemned in the Bible, merely ignored, but what help is that to a homosexual man who wants to take something away with him from the text?

In short, I am no closer, after reading this book, to deciding what to do with the Bible. I suppose I'll keep reading it, and let it decide for itself.

Reading Uphill Lately

I've been readin things! Honest!

Alfred, Lord Tennyson: Juvenilia

I'm not sure whether this collection of Tennyson's poetry is genuinely worse, or if I simply have been in a critical mood. No matter; here's my reaction. The inconsistent meter which seems to contribute to Tennyson's later works seems simply lazy here. With the possible exception of "Mariana," the first lines of which every gay man will recognize, not much here kept my eye. Nonetheless, it is interesting to see the seeds of Tennyson's characteristic themes, brotherly love and the poetic mind, in such poems as "The Gardener's Daughter," and the revealingly titled, "The Poet's Mind."

Bel and the Dragon, Susanna

These apocryphal books are a nice, if merengue in their insubstantiality, addition to the story of Daniel, who seems rather poorly characterized in his own book. Nonetheless, I can't quite give them credence. They clearly don't belong to the same author as that book, and have an almost renaissance feel to them.

Lately

Plato: Euthyrpho, Crito, Phaedo

Surprisingly accesible. Although I can't really decide whether to attribute the ideas to Plato or Socrates, I agree with them nonetheless. I especially like that the discussion of Piety ends abruptly and without resolution. I suspect Platocrates is positing that 'Piety' is a meaningless word, in that it cannot be defined satisfactorily, and that its only use is demagoguery.

Abelard and Heloise: collected letters

Disappointing. What's the big deal? Romeo, Tristan, and Troilus he ain't. His supposedly romantic letters are rude, terse, misogynist, and altogether free from beauty. She is a bit more savory, and the tension between religious restraint and amorous desperation is palpable, but still does not live up to the hype.

unless . . .

Also included in this collection were excerpts from anonymous letters sent by a similar couple in the twelfth century. Scholars have suggested based on usage and grammar analysis that the anonymous letters are actually written by Abelard and Heloise. If this is so, Wow! Zing! The smoldering poetry and exhausting lust in these few fragments is zesty indeed, and would change my opinion entirely if they were indeed the authors in their precloistering.

On a personal note, I certainly can relate to Abelard's choice of monkhood after his disfigurement. I feel the same way myself lately. Of course, I'm far too impatient for the monastic life, but I have considered it. And I wonder if he would have maintained his affection for Heloise if he still had his cock.

Christopher Marlowe: Edward II

All you Marlovian conspiracy theorists out there can go sit on your thumbs. Shakespeare he ain't. For all my issues with Willy, he blows this sucker out of the water. I'm sure Edward II, supposedly his most dramatically advanced work, is nice to see on stage, but even the worst of Shakespeare (probably Twelfth Night, although you will disagree) outstrips him mightily in content, flow and especially language. I can't think of a single speech from Edward that made me want to reread, digest and memorize it, while every page of Shakespeare inspires that response.

Sirach, Baruch, The Letter of Jeremiah, The Song of Azariah.

Fascinating as far as Apochrypha go, but still lacking the gravitas of the rest of the Bible. Sirach himself notes that his book is not to be taken as scripture. Filled as it is with valid observations (and the occasional distaff blunder), Solomon he ain't. Personal note: Azariah has long been one of my favorite characters in the Bible. This little fragment reinforces that stand.

Miscellaneous

Deepak Chopra: The Path to Love

Not the sort of thing I would usually pick up, but interesting nonetheless. Chopra has a real knack for putting complex metaphysical truths simply without being condescending or diluting them beyond usefullness. At the same time, so much of the book was written to those who already have significant others and wish to improve their relationships, I didn't feel like I got as much out of it as I might have.

Tacitus: The Annals

Something tells me I have read this book out of sequence. I was able to follow the successions and personal dramas easily, but my incomplete grasp of Roman politics and government made certain of the other details difficult to grasp. I has to invent mnemonics to remind myself that a Quaestor was less important than an Aedile, who was less important than a Praetor, who was less important than a Consul, and so on. Still, eventually I will return to this (and to Plutarch) and refine my inderstanding. Also, some of the most fascinating sections of The Annals are lost to prosperity: Caligula's reign, and the last two years of Nero's.

Federico Garcia Lorca: Selected Poems

I find that I have learned something about poetry during this little translation kick on which I have been. Part of the reason it was such an easy undertaking to translate Borges, as I have mentioned, is that his poetic vocabulary is rather limited. Once I learned the words for nightingale, mirror, and labyrinth, I was set. Of course, it also helped that Borges is, as poets go, remarkably consistent in terms of theme, but that's another essay altogether.

The same is true of Lorca. Now that I have learned the words for gypsy, mud, and putrid, and have become fluent in the conjugation of the verbs 'to groan' and 'to wail', I find that the going is a bit smoother. Of course, it was at first confusing that he makes such extensive use of the imperfect indicitave and subjunctive tenses, which are scarcely used in English, but I adapted.

I am certain therefore, that the same will be true as I undertake the reading of Octavio Paz, and furthermore that the same is true of poetry in all languages, including my own. My English lexicon is simply so comfortable that I don't notice when a poet uses the same word repeatedly. By contrast, I never learned the words for 'carnation' or 'iodine' in High School Spanish class, so their repetition in Lorca is startling, memorable and telling. I intend to revisit some of my poetry and see what words have established squatting rights in my verse. Perhaps it will be equally illuminating.

Another aspect of Lorca's work that makes it more complicated than Borges' is his inconsistency of theme. Although his tone never wavers from the passionate disillusionment and reminiscence of a Marica out of place, he draws constantly from folk tradition that is only indirectly revealing of his intent. Many of his poems are not only in the form of traditional Andalusian or Gypsy songs, but they also draw from those themes. Therefore, when the married woman has an affair on the bank of a river as in La Casada Infiel, one really must dig to extract Lorca's meaning--which I take to be the disconnect between the pleasure of pale thighs and the dawn.

The central poem of the collection, Oda A Walt Whitman, is the key to unlocking Lorca. The raillery he here unleashes against gay culture underlies most of his other work, especially when it touches upon the subject of erotic love. He declares, "No Haya Cuartel!" against those "Madres de lodo, arpias, enemigas sin sueno (where's a tilde when I need it?)" I have personally met those men! "Asesininos de palomas! . . . emboscadas en yertos paisajes de cicuta (one of Lorca's favorite words)." By contrast, there exist "los clasicos, los senelados, los suplicantes / os cierran las puertas de la bacanal." These are the real men, those who can live with such poetry as Lorca reveals in his later work, especially the volume "Divan Del Tamarit." The Gacelas held here (about which form I need to learn more) made me gasp with amazement and cry flavorless tears, neither of joy or sorrow. The desperate love, the men pierced by fountains who spill their blood in in a widening shadow on the silk of their divans, the reclining nights of a single golden moment, this is the world I am terrified and ecstatic to inhabit. There are no gay bars here.

You know the drill by now.

Wisdom of Solomon

I expected this to be an apocryphal version of Proverbs, but no! Rather, it reminds me of Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy. It is not a sequence of pithy epigrams, but rather a panegyric to Wisdom herself. Very nice.

Bret Easton Ellis: Glamorama

I respected Robert far more before he suggested this book to me. It was nice, but why is it his favorite? Just because people's vaginas fall out of the bodies in response to virulent poisons and others' intestines shoot out of their rectums in a purple foam while being electrocuted does not make it a classic. Funny, but not a classic.

Augustine: Confessions

I can relate, Augustine, old boy. I have, like you, been a slut, a prey to my baser--if not basest--instincts. Like you, I have grown tired with it, but found myself unable to give it up entirely. And like you, I have searched for meaning in religion and found it wanting. What was it that made you change your mind? Did you have an epiphany? If so, where can I get one? You make it sound like you simply decided on a purely rational basis that devotion was the way to go, but I have reasoned myself to a different--if compatible--conclusion. Where did our paths diverge?

Oh, and the commentary on Genesis? Boooooring.

Jorge Luis Borges: Selected Poems

I have been working on this for years. I started by reading the English translations on the converse and looking for inaccuracies. Gradually, I would read the Spanish obverse in its entirety By the time I got to Dos Versiones De "Ritter, Tod und Teufel," I barely looked at the English. Now I move on to do the same with Lorca, Quevedo and Neruda.

Part of what made Borges such a provident beginning to this project was his apparent amnesia. He wrote only a handful of poems, as prolific as he was. Uns Rosa Amarilla is the same poem as El Golem, and Mi Ultimo Tigre, from his penultimate volume Atlas, is a prosaic version of El Otro Tigre from his early El Hacedor. I henceforth use the translated versions of the texts to spare myself the effort importing tildes.

Every poem seems to ask and answer the questions, "What am I? Am I nothing or everything?", the answer to which is a guarded yes. In his underrated short story, Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote, Borges makes it clear that all literature ceases to belong to the author as soon as it is read. This volume now belongs to and was authored by Brandon Payne, who spilled a casserole in the margins to notarize his ownership. In his poetry, Borges expands on the idea; not only literature, but all sensation and experience is owned by and composes myself. Borges never wanders far from the banks of Heraclitus' river, which wears labyrinthine arroyos into experience, and faces itself to reflect an endless succession of mirrors. Things and people float on the surface of this river, on which we bump into each other like driftwood, and often Borges poems are simple lists of the things he is:

The Colors of a Turner when the lights
Are turned out in the narrow gallery
And not a footstep sounds in the deep night.
The other side of the dreary map of the world.
The tenuous spiderweb in the pyramid.
The sightless stone and the inquiring hand. (Cosas)
My cane, my pocket change, this ring of keys,
The obedient lock, the belated notes,(Las Cosas)
The circular time of the stoics,
The coin in the mouth of the dead man,
The sword's weight on the scale, (Las Causas)
Death, the weight of dawn, the endless plain
And the intricacy of stars,
And to have seen nothing or almost nothing
But the face of a young girl in Buenos Aires. (Elegia)

I feel like cutting the titles out of all the poems and conflating them into a prose work of remarkable depth, insight, and repetitiveness. Perhaps Borges simply became senile and forgot what he had written (he suggests as much in the prologue to El Oto, El Mismo), but I suspect that he simply had succumbed to the knowledge that all thoughts, all poems are one:

Soon, I shall know what I am.

Philip Levine: Breath

To quote a Poem by Borges, the title of which I forget, "Soon I will know who I am." And as Philip Levine might say, I am in the process of naming myself, of discovering, "What did I bring to the dance?" (Gospel).

In what I consider the central poem of this collection, Naming, Levine endeavors to define himself via a series of Joycian vignettes from his life. In this poem, he shows the reader, "All the small secrets that contain [him]." He and his Brother go through life, "growing into the names they answered to / until they thought they were those names," in other words, without authentic names of their own. It is only through the act of experiencing life that Levine, and the human for which he speaks, actually develops a name, an identity.

That defining moment comes

. . . outside the Avalon at 2 A.M.
when the lights blink off, the kids leave in pairs,
to be alone then, hearing only breath,
your own breath rising to answer with words
you didn't know you knew the pale questions
of the full moon, to know for the first time
you are a name without a number.

I have had this very moment. If you scour my other blog, you will be able to locate it under the entry, "Please, Blue Fairy, Make Me A Real Boy."

The Pages Creep on Apace

Books I've read since last posting:

Haggai-Malachi

Didn't take much away with me here.

Tobit, Judith, Esther (Greek version)

Fascinating as these stories are, I can understand why they are considered Apocryphal. They just don't live, they don't cut the way the rest of the bible does. Whether this makes them better or worse is open to interpretation, but they are clearly of a different species, more akin to The Decameron than The rest of the Hebrew Scriptures.

Charles Dickens: Nicholas Nickelby

I read this monster simply out of arrogance. I couldn't stand knowing that Mark Hennesy, that bag of wind, had read an iportant book I had not. And glad I am to have read it. That Complete Oxford Illustrated Dickens I bought on a whim five years ago has been gathering far too much dust. And it was enjoyable as well. I disagree with the common complaint that young Nicholas is too perfect, too earnest. He is as tragically flawed as any well written hero in literature, a hot-headed, impetuous, thoughtless, if loyal and stalwart figure.

Interestingly, I believe I have now read as many books so far this year as I did all year 2005.

Quickies

Books I've read since my last post but, for whatever reason, don't feel like writing about:

Harper Lee: To Kill A Mockingbird

I am wholly inadequate to the task of analyzing this book based on only one reading. I'll revisit later.

Stephen Chapman: The 5 Love Languages

Jason recommended this to me with nearly the same breath as, "Just friends." Taking that as feedback, I have now read it and, as with on other topics, Jason was right.

Jim Wallis: God's Politics

A thought-provoking, if repetitive and pedantic, book on the intersection between religion and politics. I was almost convinced.

William Shakespeare: Measure for Measure

M4M, as we have taken to calling it, was surprisingly cogent for a Shakespeare comedy. More readable and entertaining, in my opinion, than Twelfth Night or As You Like It. Read in preparation for a theatrical performance, which was worth the $10 student price, but not the $40 full price. Prudent of me to have kept my ID, no?

Obadiah-Zephaniah

Sadly, not much worth reporting here, save that Schadenfreude is frowned upon.

Amos

I have reclaimed my interest in the Bible. After, as per my previous post, being unimpressed with what was formerly my favorite section, I felt like replacing it on the dust shelf. I figured, however, that Amos was only nine chapters, and that I should make a bit more progress before moving on. Wow.

It is provident that I read it immediately after reading a relevant portion of Jim Wallis' God's Politics, with which I have been so far only mildly impressed. Amos, as it happens, speaks precisely to Wallis' message of social justice. Take this striking example: "Hear this word, you cows of Bashan / who are on Mount Samaria, / who oppress the poor, who crush the needy, / who say to their husbands, / "Bring something to drink!" (4:1). I know these women! They often, even , claim to be liberal activists, while shopping at Terra Verde and spending obscene amounts on flowing garments. Or this: "Alas for those who lie on beds of ivory, / and lounge on their couches, / eat lambs from the flock, / and calves from the stall; who sing idle songs to the harp . . . who drink wine from bowls, and anoint themselves with finest oils" (6:4-6). I also know these men. Surely it is an obscenity in the face of God to spend vast sums on moisturizer, even thousands of dollars on decorative acoutrements for the house and yard, while even a single soul is hungry.

It is therefore a credit to me that I own nothing but what the universe has dropped on me, and it is a shame on me that I have been so phenomenally ungrateful. Thank you to God, Tao, JEHOVAH, the universe, whoever you are today. I have a new appreciciation for what Amos means when he identifies you repeatedly as "The God of hosts." Surely we are your guests, each and every one of us, and should behave accordingly. And you are only our God to the extent to which we ourselves are hosts, to the level of our hospitality for our fellow guests.

Not Illiterate; Honest.

Just lazy. I've been reading at my usual rate, or perhaps even a little more, but I simply haven't felt like writing about any of them. Here is a rundown: Daniel (formerly my favorite Bible book) Hosea, Joel, none of which I felt interested in. Bulfinch's mythology, from which I gained considerable perspective and knowledge, but writing about which I don't feel competent to perform. And Gabriel Garcia Marquez' Chronicle of a Death Foretold, which was amazing, but which I need to read again to do justice.

Ezekiel

I know how the residents of Jerusalem must have felt. As Ezekiel took one third of his hair and burned it, struck one third with a sword (a comical image, if you ask me), and threw the remaining third to the wind, what could they possibly think except, "What the fuck is he doing?" The book which bears Ezekiel's name is bookended by two scrupulously detailed and mind-bogglingly pointless accounts of prophetic vision. Normally, description is used to highlight meaning, not to replace it. But by the eighth chapter of temple measurements, "From the gate to the vestibule was fifty cubits," and so on sin terminus, I had given up waiting for him to get to the point. He seems to expect that the distance from the nave to the pilaster is sufficiently interesting by itself. I disagree.

Which is not to say the meat in this boredom sandwich was not highly comestible. If one discards the aforementioned beginning and ending narratives, Ezekiel actually borders on the inspiring. For instance, JEHOVAH promises through Ezekiel, "A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh" (36:26). "Please!" was my spontaneously verbal response upon reading this passage. How nice it would be for God to grab me by the leg and shake me until all my broken ideas and feelings spill out of my pockets. He then could fill his promise, "I will take you . . . and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water upon you" 36: 24,25). Please, Show me where that land is, and I shall meet you there.

Terry McAdam: Very Much Alive

At first, I resisted reading this book on principle. My Grandfather presumed to recommend it to me on the assumption that I needed bolstering after my accident. The author happens to have been a professor of his forty-odd years ago at Washburn University, and also happens to have been a parapalegic. My immediate reaction was to assure myself that I didn't need any power of positive thinking, Lifetime made for TV movie, inspirational recounting of some guy's pathetic life. But eventually I relented on the grounds that the book is only 150 pages long.

Hidden between the invective about funding for veteran's hospitals and stern admonition to do one's best and keep a stiff upper lip, there is one chapter that I actually found relevant and touching. It seems that one nurse in his recovery ward was particularly beautiful and inaccessible. Wonder of wonders! She fell in love with and married one of the patients, a parapalegic. She actually managed to convince the man that she was attracted to him, and didn't care a sow's nipple about his infirmity. Those of you who know me or have read some of my blog may realize how nice I would think it if a man were to say sincerely, "Now, no more foolishness about [being damaged goods]" (121). I wonder if I will believe him.

Zora Neale Hurston: Their Eyes Were Watching God

This is what Toni Morrison would like to write when she grows up. It has all the rich characterization and colloquial creativity of Beloved or Song of Solomon, but--will wonders never cease--with thematic continuity. One would think, with Hurston's background in antrhopology, that it would be she who errs on the side of interesting, but disjointed, ethnic folk-tale. Not so. Regardless of the turns the novel takes, she keeps one finger pressed on the heart of Janie's quest.

It is this quest which gives this novel its soul. Janie "had found a jewel down inside herself and she had wanted to walk where people could see her and gleam it around" (90). I can think of no embellishment that would make this a better mission in life, except perhaps to say that the jewel at each of our centers could also use polishing on occassion.

The chief scholarly curiosity of Hurston's work lies in its ill-reception during her life. Modern theorists decry Langston Hughes and his cadre of so-called progressive black intellectuals, but I can see their point. Hurston is (I decline to write 'was', for she is more alive today than many with whom I have daily contact) a woman out of her time, and as such she certainly had no place in their Harlem Reidentification. She did not belong in the 20's, and if I had my druthers I would resurrect her and watch gleefully as she snatches Tyra Banks' weave off of her insincere head, and tells Maya Angelou to lighten up, for God's sake.

Sun Tzu: The Art of War

I suppose if I was into fighting, this would be a remarkably useful book. It manages to avoid confinement to Warring States period China, and could certainly be applied to modern warfare. In fact, given the tendency to turn everything into a battle, it could also find a home in the boardroom, on the football field, in various political think-tanks, even on the nightstands of married couples. I resent, however, the implication that "War is the road to survival or ruin . . . It is mandatory that it be thoroughly studied" (I.1). Although this is a common modern notion, namely that "freedom ain't free" and "someone's gotta fight fer our liberty," I contest it. I happen to think that an impressive military is not necessary for any nation, especially in our world of devastating missiles and other unmanned weapons. The entire culture of war is corrosive to the universe. It perpetuates a win-lose mentality that leaves mankind far short of its potential.

Which is not to say that I didn't glean anything whatsoever from "The Art of War." Sun Tzu does not pull his strategies out of thin air; they are based on a solid observation of what works--not only in war, but in general life. Therfore, when he says, "Weigh the situation, and then move" (VII.15), he could just as well be speaking of marriage or finance as of battle. He returns often to the idea that a battle must be won before it is engaged. "A victorious army wins its victories before seeking battle" (VI.14). What could be truer of life than that one must avoid instant gratification and weigh choices well in advance? Likewise, Sun advocates constant change. And in life, one must always be prepared to use cheng, normal forces, as well as ch'i, extraordinary ones, and to shift from one to the other at a moment's notice. One must be prepared for constantly shifting circumstances, and also to change approaches the moment they become ineffective.

Perhaps life is a battle. Perhaps the point is, after all, to win. But for now, I choose to see life as a journey, a path upon which all can walk simultaneously without competition. For to reach the end alone doesn't seem like any victory at all.

Erasmus: The Praise of Folly

The problem with the blissfullnes of ignorance is that cognizance is a one-way street. Once aware, one cannot squeeze back through the keyhole to the gleeful land of Ignorasia, where there are no taxes and the streets are made of Turkish Delight.

Do not despair, though. Once one has become disignorant, there is still the option of being foolish. That is to say, one can still behave as if not knowing any better. Erasmus raises the question, "Is foolishness as blissful as ignorance?", and answers, "Yes."

Whether he means, in earnest, to suppose that the life of a fool is rewarding is open to debate. At times, his reasoning is so flimsy one has to assume he argues in jest. Most of this may be attributable to the conflation of natural fools, the ignorant, with those who act foolishly. This is no mean distinction; what is bliss for one is often secret death for the other. While the natural fool behaves foolishly, he does so through little fault of his own, and tends not to berate himself, perhaps not even recognizing the folly of his actions. The foolish man, as opposed to the fool, acts foolishly through conceit, laziness, fear, or hedonism. As such, his spirit withers on the vine every time the virtuous choice is before him and he ignores it.

Erasmus isolates the true issue when he asks, "Isn't it true that the happiest creatures are those which are least artificial and most natural?" (72). When he stipulates that fools are to be envied, he does not mean the stupid, but the simple. While it not possible for a cognizant person to behave foolishly without injuring his spirit, for the same man to live simply is not only healthy, but preferable. This solves a difficult dilemma which faces those gifted with intelligence. Often, a little bit of wisdom (which is all any human can be had to say) is more dangerous than none at all. Awareness without understanding of the primal functioning of the universe could, if dwelt upon, drive a man into a cyclone of turbulent and circular thought. All such analysis does is confuse and frustrate the would-be sage, for he always reasons himself back to his starting point. "Those who have a foretaste of [wisdom]--and it comes to very few--experience something very like madness" (131). And what good would it be to understand completely, even if such a thing were possible? None whatsoever. Therefore let the truly wise man discard all wisdom, especially that labelled 'learning,' and pursue simplicity--not foolishness--as the highest of virtues.

Lamentations

I was right to dread reading this book. Although my Dad insists that the lament of the author is answered in the end by faith, such is clearly not the case. The book begins and ends with despair, which exactly mirrors my current state of mind. "They heard how I was groaning," I seem to hear myself say, "with no one to comfort me" (1:21). "Why have you forgotten [me] completely?" I ask (5:20).

It is only for the briefest of moments that the writer's wail is lifted long enough for him to realize, "The Lord will not reject forever" (3:31). For a mere seventeen verses of the book, hope shines through the desperate circumstances of Israel at that time, and the lesson is an interesting one. Although the recurring message is that the affliction of the nation is due to the fact that they "have transgressed and rebelled,"(3:42) the author stops feeling sorry for himself long enough to recognize that, even though sins must be repaid, once they are there is no need to reconsider them. The mercies of JEHOVAH "are new every morning," he insists (3:23). Once one has paid for his sins, there is a new moment granted, and new choices can be made to reach a different outcome. I don't happen to subscribe to the ideas of atonement and retribution for sins, but what the author of Lamentations suggests rings true: beat yourself up until midnight if you must, but once a new day arrives move on.

Sin-Leqi-Unninnĩ: Gilgamesh

There are two parts to this review, and they could not disagree with one another more. To begin with, I would like to voice my frustration with the choices of the editors, Gardner and Maier, who have managed to turn a vibrant, exotic story completely sterile. The edition I chose to read was so needlessly scholarly as to be nearly unreadable.

Fortunately, enough of the story's beauty and passion made its way through to spite the editors that I fell completely in love with it. I want to find (or create) a version which conflates the Babylonian, Sumerian and akkadian versions of the story to create a flowing narrative uninterrupted by missing fragments or editorial commentary.

Of course, the theme I found most personally relevant was that of brotherly love. The connection between Gilgamesh and Enkidu, the passion they felt for each other, was intoxicating. Likewise, I relate to Gilgamesh's quest for immortality, but do not agree with the editorial conclusion that he exhausted all means of escaping death and failed at each. Surely, his pursuit of love, conquest, offspring, worship and even his journey to the bottom of the abyss to retrieve a life-sustaining plant were all unsuccessful attempts to live indefinitely.

But if he can reach across the page and touch me, especially among general scholarly agreement that his story is based on actual events, does he not still live? Furthermore, are not his experiences reflective of Biblical stories--the flood, the life-giving plant stolen by a snake, etc.--and therefore practically still occurring?

Jeremiah

It is a real struggle to view this, or any revered religious book, with strict objectivity. In reading a novel or an essay, I expect the work to convince me of its merit. With the Bible, however, I choose to read on the assumption that the burden of proof lies on me, the reader. It is my task to sift through the archaic societal baggage, potential mistranslations and disjointed narative to walk away with a jewel of understanding.

There is good news and bad news, therefore, in the reading of Jeremiah. The good news: The book has a recognizable line, a consistent tone, and seems to have been written primarily by one individual with one message. All of this makes it inifinitely more readable than its forbearer, Isaiah. The bad news: It is infinitely more readable than Isaiah. Whereas Isaiah's mixed messages actually contributed to the meaning and interest of the book, Jeremiah asks far less from the reader in terms of thought, and correspondingly is less interesting.

Which frustrates me, a reader determined to make some sense out of it. Yes, JEHOVAH is mad at Israel, and yes, he is then even madder at Babylon, but very little is revealed in the delivery of these judgement messages about his nature or personality. In fact, judgment is the one consistently interesting topic in Jeremiah. Perhaps most intersting is the presentation of the writer's judgment against the God he is worshipping. He actually dares to present a case against God, and God deigns to listen. "You will be in the right, O JEHOVAH, when I lay charges against you;" he acknowledges, "but let me put my case to you" (12:1). JEHOVAH's answer does much to explain the seeming indecision with which he was painted in Jeremiah. "After I have plucked them up," he says of evildoers, "I will again have compassion on them, and I will bring them again to their heritage and to their land: (12:15). God compares humans to "The vessel he was making of clay [which] was spoiled in the potter's hand." Instead of discarding it, however, "he reworked it into another vessel, as seemed good to him"(18:4). The judgment of God is thorough; "JEHOVAH test[s] the mind and search[es] the heart, to give to them according to their ways" (17:10). Heart, mind and actions are all taken into account. This is appropriate, for God alone has the perspective that comes with physical expansiveness. "Who can hide in secret places?" he asks, "Do I not fill heaven and Earth?" (23:23). But his judgment is also fluid; fate is always in the hands of the judged.

Which is not to say that God is indecisive, as seemed to be the case in Isaiah. He acts with great pith and moment, if not absolute finality. It is significant that each prophetic utterance begins with the phrase, "The word of JEHOVAH came to me, saying . . ." or some variation thereof. It is the word of God, his very speaking, which contains his power and through which he levels nations. Repeatedly, God's judgment is expressed in terms of vocalization: "JEHOVAH will roar from on high, and from his holy habitation utter his voice" (25:30). And, perhaps more significantly, the power of God's word is a negotiable document; it is transferrable. "Now I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant" (1:9-10). It is, therefore, not an act of scholarly ingenuousness to approach so-called holy books with a certain level of reverence and an assumption of value. The word of God--in any of its forms--is not only a thunder, but an electric current which runs through the spirit and activates it in ways human authors can only reflect, not capture.

Alexander Pushkin: Eugene Onegin

I can think of no other book that, while almost entirely free of plot and characterization, nonetheless manages to be an enjoyable and useful read. Pushkin skeletonizes his characters to the point where one cannot help but assume that he is making a point. They are more figurines than people, and by the same token the story itself is nothing more than a series of frequently and lengthily interrupted brief episodes--hardly enough to qualify as a plot. To summarize, Eugene refuses Tatyana and kills his friend Lensky. Years later, it is Tatyana's turn to refuse Eugene. That's it, the sum total.

What makes Eugene Onegin such a worthwhile project is the commentary of the Narrator, the only fully developed character in the work. Pushkin's narrator hovers aloofly over the story, more interested in talking about himself than about any of the characters. It is almost as if Pushkin is drawing a parallel between his narrator and the moon, who also dispassionately observes the goings-on at strategic places throughout the novel, as in 6.II:

"Only Tatyana does not sleep,
but at the window, in the splendid
radiance of Dian, sits in pain
and looks out on the darkened plain."

The narrator is either a renaissance man or a dilletante, and drops names with a heaviness that informs the reader of his concern with their impression of him. He talks far more about his life and opinions than anyones else's, and his expostulatory intrusions into the story are enough to make William Thackeray seem detached and aloof. As he refers to himself, he is "the sober head, detesting each / human reaction, every speech / as the translation of our being . . ." (4.LI).

Wherein lies the power of the (quasi) novel. Pushkin's removal from his characters--even though he claims personal ownership of them--gives him free rein to make commentary on their choices as types, rather than as individuals. Tatyana is a typical starry-eyed maiden, and Pushkin's authorial advice to her is really directed at the reader:

"Don't let a ghost be your bear-leader,
don't waste your efforts on the air.
Just let yourself be your whole care,
your loved one, honorable reader!" (4.XXII)

Pushkin's disdain for all forms of affectation, both from the disenfranchised poet and the society Grand Dame, serves as a cautionary tale. Tatyana's and Lensky's passionate romanticism lead to heartbreak and/or death. And Onegin's capricious life of leisure offers no better. The key to fulfillment lies in truth to one's own self. And concern for one's image--even an affected disconcern for one's image--is iron pyrite.

Isaiah

I can't escape the feeling that something here is inaccessible to me, and I worry that I am being somehow blocked from understanding it. "The vision of all this has become a sealed document. If it is given to those with the command, 'Read this,' they say, 'We cannot, for it is sealed'" (30:11). Nonetheless, I share what I glean from the margins of this seemingly inscrutable book with you, dear reader.

I like to think that Isaiah is either two different people, or else suffering from multiple personality disorder. He seems to have two diametrically opposed viewpoints on every topic. For instance, there is the subject of prophecy, central to the gravitas of the book. At one point, Isaiah seems to agree with Boethius that God's power of prophecy stems from his perception of time as simultaneous, instead of linear. It is thus that he is able to reveal the future to his prophet, as though withdrawing a curtain. "He will destroy on his mountain / the shroud that is cast over all peoples, / the sheet that is spread over all nations" Isaiah describes (though not necessarily regarding prophecy) (25:7). And by the same token, he is able to draw the curtain over the eyes of those who needn't see the whole of time: "He has closed your eyes, you prophets, / and covered your heads, you seers" (29:10).

Elsewhere, however, Isaiah presents an entirely different model of prophecy. At times, there is a distinct linearity to Isaiah's experience. When JEHOVAH declares, "I am God, and there is no one like me, / declaring from the end the beginning," it is because "[His] purpose shall stand, / and [he] will fulfill [his] intention" (46:10). In other words, the divine gift of prophecy comes from the inescapability of the divine will; "I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass," God declares, "I have planned and I will do it" (46:11). Both models are functional and give birth to different lines of philosophical reasoning.

This level of contradiction is not upsetting to me. I find the formation of a synthesis between the two models engaging and a worthy pursuit. And Isaiah even seems to acknowledge the paradox when he writes, "In its time, I will accomplish it quickly," highlighting both the agency of God and the influence of fate (60:22). What is more unnerving is the contradictory pictures in Isaiah of the personality of God. With the same breath, the God of Isaiah declares, " . . . there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom," and, "Through the wrath of JEHOVAH of hosts the land was burned / and the people became like fuel for the fire" (10: 7,19). Isaiah spends entire chapters explaining this seeming capriciousness of God, and comes up with several ideas:

Firstly, Isaiah seems to think that God alternatingly destroys Israel and rescues her for the sake of his name. "for my own sake, for my own sake, I do it," he exclaims. "For why should my name be profaned?" (48:11). Such a narcissistic god hardly seems worthy of worship.

Alternately, Isaiah paints a portrait of God that is capricious and whimsical in his treatment of his people. After he has used Babylon to ravish Israel, he turns around and ravishes Babylon through Cyrus, releasing Israel. And that is not even to speak of his constant reversals on the subject of "My people," which I don't feel up to delineating. Such an inconsistent god seems equally unworthy.

The approach that resonates with me is described in Isaiah 30:20. "Though the lord may give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide himself anymore." "See, I have refined you, but not like silver;" he consoles the reader, "I have tested you in the furnace of adversity" (48:10). The people of God experience alternating capture and release, not due to God's indecisiveness, but for their own purification. That which is difficult is also necessary for growth.

Which is a comfort to me, having recently been through the fire of adversity. "Look to the rock from which you were hewn, / and to the quarry from which you were dug," JEHOVAH reminds me (51:1). Perhaps he will manage to make a man out of me yet.

Gene Stratton Porter: Freckles

I can see without binoculars why my Mother and her Mother before her considered this book a personal favorite. Porter's charmingly spiritual model of the world is instantly compelling, and almost convinces one of the fundamental goodness of people. Almost. In addition to my natural resistance of such an optimistic paradigm, I found Porter's characterization lacking that edge which would have made her characters believable and sympathetic. As it is, though bald caricatures of human goodness, the population of Freckles is generally enjoyable company as long as one does not take them for more than allegorical archetypes.

The real sparkle of the book lies, not in the people, but in the plot. Porter's simple charm and ingenuous honesty deliver precisley the right tone for a story that came to me at exactly the right time. Freckles is, like me, an amputee, and, like me, does not allow his handicap to get in the way of his hard work, but is insecure enough to let it get in the way of his heart's desire. Feeling condemned to life as a demi monde, he must be forcefully convinced that life holds more for him than the bare necessities, let alone a tender and devoted lover. The moment at which he finally allows himself to be convinced of his worthiness deserves direct quotation, and I expect it to inspire tears on the second reading, as it did on the first:

"Now, here was another class [of people], that had all they needed of the world's best and were engaged in doing things that counted. They had things worth while to be proud of; and they had met him as a son and brother. With them he could, for the only time in his life, forget the lost hand that every day tortured him with a new pang" (161).

Geoffrey Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales

It took me three years to get around to finishing this beast, and I'm glad to be able to cross it off of my list. I had read it many years ago in modern English, but my natural fastidiousness would not let me consider it done until I had read it in Middle English. And who would have known it would be such an undertaking? Anyway, I really don't have much to say about it, largely, I'm sure, because many of the niceties were stopped by immigration at the language border. In addition to that barrier is the fact that my personal taste does not seem to lie in Chaucer's line. Some of the tales were enjoyable enough--I was impressed by The Knight's Tale and The Franklin's Tale, and The Prioress' Tale actually brought me to tears--but the vast majority were either too stuffy or too crude to merit my endorsement. The fabliaux, especially, seemed beneath a poet of Chaucer's reputation. It should come as no surprise, however. Chaucer evidently "borrowed" much of his material from Boccaccio, for whose work I didn't care either.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson: The Lady of Shalott and Other Poems

I love structure. Love it. Free verse is alright, but if I am to bother reading something that somebody else wrote, I want it to be better than I could write myself. Any guttersnipe can write passable free verse (and no doubt some would argue with me, but this is my blog, ha ha). Anyway, the best poets in my mind are those who use form as well as content to deliver their message.

Hence, my interest in Tennyson. Although his work is a little more visual than auditory, I still like that he bothers to think about meter and rhyme in his work. For this reason I read In Memoriam, and was so pleased that I subsequently picked up this item. Though this particular anthology was grouped according to period, not according to merit, and thereby included a few really forgettable stinkers, there were enough thought-provoking, insightful selections to keep me happy and make me want more.

It is not simply his style that draws me to Tennyson, however. That was just the initial draw. I find it curious to look inside the mind of one whom I trust to be completely honest and precise, but who has experienced things I have not. I can follow Tennyson up to a certain point, when he talks about isolation, longing and regret. It is when he touches on what may be his special topic, friendship, that I grow most unfamiliar and correspondingly most interested. Tennyson seems to have tapped into a source of deep and priceless emotion which I have not, and I am intensely curious to experience it.

You see, I don't have lifelong friends to whom I am closer than a brother. I suppose Sherri and Chad are the closest things, but even they have been around a comparatively short time. What Tennyson describes are friendships so deep and unifying that they cannot be severed. Not only mind and heart are vibrating in unison, but spirit as well. I crave such an intimate bond of love, for I know that I can hold up my end. I simply have yet to meet someone who can bear up under the experience for an extended period of time.

But enough about me, back to Tennyson. The keystone of the collection is, of course, The Lady of Shalott, which I found to be a compelling allegory of human experience. Tennyson borders on the philosophical here, leaning to the Cartesian side a little, as he describes a lady who strives to capture life, but can only manage to do so twice removed: once by reflection and once by representation. When she finally experiences the fact of existence, stepping out of her isolation, the experience is so treacherously beautiful that she dies. Tennyson manages to capture a ponderously difficult idea and pin it to the page with aplomb and sympathy that I'm not sure I could manage. Also worth note is, of course, The Lotos-Eaters, which nicely complements The Lady of Shalott's sense of weariness, but presents the other side of the experience. My personal favorite, however, is The Palace of Art. Although a bit awkward in places and lacking the artistic merit of the aforementioned two, it reminds me of my own tendency to cerebral isolation and admonishes me to allow others into my well-decorated interiors. It is with this in mind that I have finally given out the address of this Blog to a few select friends so that I, too, may ". . .hear the dully sound / Of human footsteps fall" around my inner sanctum (275-6).

Ralph Waldo Emerson: Nature and Selected Essays

I almost didn't finish this book. In retrospect, to have given up after the first essay would have been a mistake and a tragedy. Never have I related so personally to an author's perspective, style, and taste as I now do to Emerson's. Often his thoughts and conclusions are identical to my own, although we arrived at them without each other's input. And on at least one occasion, I was startled to find that the passage I was reading reflected my own questions and corresponding answers from earlier that very day. What is most spooky to me, however, is not that the content of Emerson's essays reflects my own ideas. It is a source of fondness that his style, usage, and sentence strucure are similar to my own. I even noticed that he uses italics the way I do. It is a providence that I did not trust my first impression.

That impression comes from the fact that "Nature," the cornerstone essay of the collection and possibly his most heavily anthologized, turns out to be one of his worst. I thought so little of it after reading that I put the book down never to be finished. Out of fairness, however, I gave it a second chance and was impressed by what I read in the essay, "The American Scholar." I then decided to finish and became rapturously delighted with most of the remaining essays, including "Man the Reformer" and "Circles," to identify a few of my favorites. I notice that I most enjoy those essays that began life oratically, as opposed to those that were intended primarily for publication. It is no surprise to me that Emerson found success as an itenerant speaker; his thoughts progress in each case from sensibly engaged to passionately emphatic with a crescendo that seems well suited to public delivery.

And then there is the substance of his essays, the content. Suffice it to say that they served as a mordant to my own burgeoning theology, setting the dye indelibly in my person. It is pointless here to iterate each point on which I agree with him; they are so numerous as to be nearly unanimous. In the interest of objectivity, however, allow me just to offer the criticism that he could stand to be a little less poetic. I can't discount the impression I get that, although he frowns on courtesy of all sorts, he is trying to impress the reader with his floridity. It is this fault which nearly cost him my readership, as "Nature" is the most saturated offender. In fact, although I found nothing to disagree with in thst essay, I also found nothing to agree with. It was so nauseatingly sentimental as to be nearly devoid of content. Yes, Ralph, the sunsets are beautiful. We get that, but move on already! Sheesh.

Gao Xingjian: Soul Mountain

This book treads a very thin line between brilliant metaliterature and slovenly experimental trash. It ends up coming out slightly on the former side, but it was a close contest all the way through. I enjoyed it greatly, but I am a literary masochist. I love books that hold up to and demand deep scrutiny. And, while I enjoyed it, I can't think of a single person to whom I would recommend it.

Anyone wishing to read this book would be well served to read chapter 52 before diving in. It is not until this point that Gao's gimmick becomes clear, namely that, although parts of the book are narrated in the second person, "you" is really an extension of "I," the author. It is chiefly this literary conceit which gives the novel its weight. With this understanding, the book transforms from an asymmetric jumble of vignettes into a treatise on the nature of the self. It is especially beautiful that the idea holds up to multiple perspectives. At times Gao seems to be saying that memory is so fickle as to make all but the most poignant moments in our lives seem as though they are happening to someone else. At other times, he seems to be pursuing the Buddhist idea that the self is to blame for all suffering. And elsewhere Gao clearly intends to foster the idea that each man is every man, a la Emerson. All of these ideas work simultaneously, and this is not even to touch on the inticacies of his play with gender.

The problem is that Gao's central idea is not strong enough to carry a book of this magnitude. At 506 dense pages, the book cannot help but seem to belabor the point a bit. The blurry scraps of stories which make up the bulk of the book run together, are unmemorable and do little more than provide an arena for Gao to shuffle pronouns in. He could have gone so much further than simply to play around with point of view. I, for one, would have liked to see him develop the theme of being trapped in the mountains by so-called "Demon Walls," or the meaning of the eponymous Lingshan.

What finally tips the scale in Gao's favor is his wonderful patterns of imagery, which are, at times, the only thing holding the book together. It is a delightful confluence that Gao is also a visual artist specializing in black and white ink drawings. This book was truly written in black and white. Everywhere the reader turns there are patterns of black shingles, black scales, black feathers, and, especially, black footprints. It is not simply that many things in the book are black; black is quilted into the book. There are rhythmic sequences of black shapes all over it. It is only this thematic consistency, in fact, which can convince me that Gao didn't accidentally send his publisher a shuffled manuscript.

Don Miguel Ruiz: The Four Agreements

A friend visited me while I was bedridden a few months ago, and noticed that I was reading The Celestine Prophecy. She suggested that this book was a nice follow up to that one and mailed it to me. Jane is, by the way, the sort of person who follows up on things she says. So I started reading it and, sure enough, there was a remarkable confluence between the messages of the two books. I was, therefore, expecting to enjoy The Four Agreements as much as I did The Celestine Prophecy. No such luck.

To distill my experience into one phrase, my overall impression was that of listening to a string of vaguely memorable semi-aphorisms mumbled in no particular order by a mildly retarded hillbilly. The author claims to be a master of Toltec wisdom, a fact which reduces my respect for the Toltecs considerably. In fact, it almost feels like he was actually a Los Angeles native who claims to be a Toltec so that his otherwise less than memorable book will have some sort of mystical allure.

Which is a shame, because if the book was reduced to a list of its chapter titles, it would actually be greatly useful. The four agreements themselves are a great distillation of functional living. The problem is that Ruiz goes into such painfully rambling detail about what each of the agreements means. I choose, therefore, to take away from this book the names of the four agreements, and to discard the rest.

Keep Your Word
It's Not About You
Don't Make Shit Up
Do Your Best

Toni Morisson: Song of Solomon

I have only one complaint with Toni Morisson's work, and until I read this book it was just a vague impression, but I now percieve it to be a pattern. She clearly has few peers when it comes to inventive characterization that skillfully treads the line between the mythological and the possible (much like Gabriel Garcia Marquez). Similarly, she creates stories that feel as though they have existed for for generations, and have simply been passed on for her to transcribe. Nonetheless, I always leave her books a little bit dissatisfied. While the stories that compose her novels are themselves are juicy and indisputably alive, they have the feel of being strung together haphazardly, and the novel as a whole suffers.

Song of Solomon, for instance, seems to have three verdant threads running through it. Milkman and Pilate each have a clear line running through the book, and it is my personal opinion that Guitar's story is separate from either of them, even though it is not as elaborate. Each story is, as I cannot state clearly enough, the sort of story that is so alive, one wonders if some version of it might have happened. It would make this book a masterpiece of craftsmanship instead of a delight, though, if all three stories came together in the end to some sort of resolution. In short, I love Morrison's books until they end. I always feel like there should be more, that something clever should have happened to make the reader satisfied. Instead I am left feeling like I followed a trail at length, only to be left standing abruptly at the edge of a cliff. "Where do I go from here?", I ask myself. In fact, I think I'll stop right now to show you how it feels.

Yann Martel: Life of Pi

This is the best book I've read so far this year. Even as I was reading it, I understood why it was so widely acclaimed. Up until the last fifty pages, I was convinced that it was a brilliant psychotheological allegory, and treated it accordingly in my mind. After finishing it, however, I was left dumbstruck with the brilliance of its culmination. Without the final few chapters, this book is a wonderful, thought-provoking read. The ending makes it an enduring masterpiece of literature.

To begin with, I related to and agreed with Pi's religious discoveries and conclusions. The way he describes his simultaneous practice of Hinduism, Islam and Christianity reminds me of a set of concentric circles. Christianity is the religion of the self, surrounding which is Islam, the religion of society, which is in turn encircled by Hinduism, the religion of the universe. This model is vaguely mirrored in his description of the carnivorous island later in the book. So much time has elapsed between my reading of the book and writing of this reaction that it is difficult to capture the glow I recieved from it, and I regret that I find myself unequal to the task of relating it to you, gentle reader. Suffice it to say that I found myself reconnecting with my spiritual side after a lenghty period of dulled senses.

In the final analysis, however, the book transformed from a religious allegory to a practical manual on life. I was left wide-mouthed by the realization that Pi and Richard Parker were one and the same. To survive, as we are, adrift in the universe, we must not only be in touch with our profound, spiritual humanity, but with our inner tiger. We must simultaneously be zen and aggresive. Lao Tze and Dr. Phil both have a place in functional humanity. Each needs the other to live, and to believe otherwise can only cause us to hate ourselves.

James Redfield: The Celestine Prophecy

Well, I suppose I better get around to updating this blog, or else forget about it forever. I actually read this book months ago, but haven't been feeling particularly motivated. As a result, my impressions have dulled a little bit and I don't expect this post to be very long or informative.

I read this book on the strong recommendation of a respected friend, and, as it happens, many of my friends are familiar with and recommend it. Several times, as I was visited in the hospital, friends would notice what I was reading and and express their general approval. And understandably so; the first half of the book is nothing short of visionary, and I find it remarkably well-fitted to what I have come to believe on my own. The idea that our unseen energy fields interact as described in The Celestine Prophecy is a conclusion I have come to on my own, based on personal impressions and the occasional striking experience. That the book is a thinly disguised theophilosophical treatise is a mixed blessing for the reader; Redfield is not a strong prose writer, and his characterization is so weak as to be painful. Nonetheless, the tone of the book is far less didactic than one might expect, and the narrative format generally makes the clearly evangelical message more palatable.

Up until the midway point of the book, in fact, I found myself agreeing with the author point for point. It is when Redfield crosses the line from philosophical to psychological that I began to have a problem with his premise. It is one thing to delineate a model of the energetic universe, and another to superimpose on that nicely functional model an explanation that feels oversimplistic and false. I have this problem with most so-called new-age thought. Whereas I agree with their descriptions of the way the universe functions, most feel the need to explain in detail why it does so, either with alien intervention, marginally Christian theology or faux science, and such explanations always feel post factum; they come up with the explanation to fit the experience. I do not happen to think that human experience needs a "why;" I am perfectly happy to know and trust how things are and to live in line with that information without tacking a story onto it to make me feel better. In short, the what of existence is more imprortant to me than the why or how.

I guess I had a lot to say after all.

Dorothy Allred Solomon: Predators, Prey and Other Kin

This book has been on my list for quite a while, due to my personal acquanitance with the author. I respect her enormously, and was not not dissapointed by either the content or the style of the book. Unlike most memoirs I have read, this book does not follow a chronological pattern, but instead jumps around in the author's personal timeline. The reader gets a feeling of being told the story orally, with details related as they occur to the teller instead of in order. The result is a very comfortable, engaging setting and a nice, easy read.

Joseph J. Ellis: Founding Brothers

This book has been on my "to read" list for years, and now that I've finally gotten around to it, I question whether it was worth the effort. It just goes to show that the Pulitzer doesn't always go to a work of genius. This is not to say that the book was poorly written. On the contrary, Ellis has a winning style and an enjoyable way with sentences. It is simply a shame that he does not seem to have had anything to say with them.

I suppose an argument could be made that Ellis is trying to use anecdotes from early American history to make a point about the nature of history in general. He seems to have some bone to pick with the common practice of reading history retroactively, of attributing our knowledge of how something turned out to the people who, at the time, had no clue. But the book does little to create any sort of cohesive argument to this effect; it simply drops the idea in from time to time as a reminder. What the reader is left with, then, is a sampling of situations and anecdotes from the period between the revolutionary war and the deaths of Adams and Jefferson, none of which would be terribly interesting or revealing were it not for Ellis' knack for narrative. In short, I didn't learn anything from the book, but at least it wasn't painful to read.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson: In Memoriam

In the interest of actually reading all the books I pretended to have read during college--some of which I wrote papers on--I picked up this rather imposing item. It was slow going, and hopelessly obscure in points, but altogether worth reading again. Tennyson seemingly sets out to capture the overwhelming loss of his bosom companion, but realizes in the telling that "words, like Nature, half reveal / half conceal the Soul within" (V). Tennyson consistently acknowledges that he is only drawing from the "topmost froth of thought", but doesn't seem to be bothered by the inescapable inadequacy of his writing (LII). He writes, not to explain or to justify, but because it is impossible for the geyser of sorrow he holds to remain unexpressed.

Tennyson fails, therefore, in successfully conveying his desperation to me. By dwelling meticulously on several key things that point to that which is itself unrecordable, however, he succeeds in conveying something more valuable. In his effort to at least adumbrate his grief, he paints such shiveringly lyrical pictures of Love, Friendship, and God that I find myself caring as little as he does that grief remains unexpressed.

I have coined the term "thoughtgasms" specifically to describe my experience while reading In Memoriam. Some passages are so plangent and alive that I experienced a physical shudder while reading them. For example:

Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds,
At least he beat his music out.
There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds (XCVI).

If I were to die at this moment, this is what I would choose for my epitaph.