All three are on a roll.
C.S. Lewis: The Screwtape Letters
I think I agree with Lewis when he writes, "Though I had never written anything more easily, I never wrote with less enjoyment." He compares the concept of Screwtape to Gulliver's Travels and Erewhon: once the idea has been conceived, they write themselves: "It would run away with you if you gave it its head." By the same token, the letters are a fun idea, but grow tiresome quickly, mostly due to their baldly pedantic manner.
Stanley Weinbaum: The Mad Moon
In order to teach Sci-Fi literature effectively, I think I shall need to limit variables. That is to say, I shall teach a story where the key element is the danger of power or the allure of the fantastic journey, but not both. Each element needs to be a separate lesson, and this story is disqualified on that count. It is mildly entertaining, and even has something to say about the rise and fall of civilizations. There is somply too much going on at one time to make it easily teachable.
1 and 2 Samuel
Well, this clears up the mystery at the end of Judges a bit. When last we left our friends the Israelites, the city of Jabesh-Gilead had been decimated to procure brides for the tribe of Benjamin, which had, in turn, been slaughtered to punish the sins of Gibeah. What a nasty business that was. What a lot of karma must had resulted; however was JEHOVAH going to balance the scales on these horrible atrocities?
Years later, the Israelites clamor for a king and Saul is chosen, seemingly at random. Where does he set up his kingdom? Gibeah. Where is he buried? Jabesh-Gilead. How wonderful that one city has closed the book an the atrocities that were set in motion by another, even if it is generations later. This is the sort of stuff I love discovering in books, and I have never heard of this connection being drawn before.
By the same token, other interesting things have revealed themselves to me now that I am seeing the bible with clean glasses. For instance, what fascinating characters David and his Captain Joab are. Little incidents of their peccadiloes went largely unstudied during my youthful Biblefication. I look forward to continuing this section through Chronicles. Surely it is all downhill after Deuteronomy.
BTD: 27ish
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Recently Consumed:
Tacitus: The Histories
As tedious and uninteresting as I found Tacitus' annals, I was surprised to become so involved in this volume. I attribute this to several factors:
Tacitus died writing the Histories. They are therefore shorter.
My attention span has improved since I read the Annals one year ago.
I came up with a cool pnemonic for the order of the Caesars: All the Caesars can never grow old! I intended to continue the sentence to include the entire parade of Caesars, until I realized that there were hundreds of them. These are the important ones, and I got bored, so I stopped.
Unlike the Annals, the History fits into my historical database nicely. As a child, I had certain dates and names drummed into my head, as they pertained to Biblical content. For instance, Sergius Paulus laid siege to Jerusalem, only to be called away.This gave the Christians, who were privy to prophecy, time to escape before Titus came back and levelled the place. What I didn't know at the time was the historical context of these events. The gherman tribes were rebelling, and the troops wree needed elsewhere. After Vespasian consolidated his power, his son (and successor) Titus was at liberty to deal with the Jews, of whom Tacitus say, ". . . their other customs, which are at once perverse and disgusting [no doubt referring primarily to the act of circumcision], owe their strength to their very badness" (V.5). Not only does Tacitus demonstrate the light in which the Romans held the Jews, he also sheds a bit of light on the enduring puzzle of Moses' punishment int he wilderness. In relating the history of the Jews, he records, " . . . they had sunk in all directions over the plain, when a herd of wild asses was seen to retire from their pasture to a rock shaded by trees. Moyses [sic] followed them, and, guided by the appearance of a grassy spot, discovered an abundant spring of water" (V.4). Although this does not entirely clear up the matter, it adds valuable information that was inconveniently left out of Genesis.
Tom Stoppard: Dirty Linen/ New Found Land, Dogg's Hamlet/Cahoot's Macbeth
I can think of no better description of Dirty Linen and the play within it, New Found Land, than Stoppard's own, which I have previously used to frame his entire oeuvre: " . . . the thing defines itself in practice first and foremost as recreation. This seems satisfactory."
As for the latter pair, It feels as though Neil Simon had a love child with Vaclav Havel. Stoppard's brilliant idea of taking Wittgenstein's theories about language to thier natural conclusion exemplifies what I think of his best work. In this and such other plays as Hapgood and Jumpers, he pokes fun at Philosophy while explicating philosophy in a genial and hilarious manner. Also of interest is his habit of plays within or beside plays, unrelated to each other and yet complementary. It is just simple entertainment, after all.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson: The Princess
Oh, William Schwenk Gilbert, you old rascal. Who else would think to dramatize a poem of Tennyson's? And I didn't even realize until I read it that "The Princess" is the source of Gilbert's "Princess Ida". However, as much as I love Gilbert and Sullivan--more than sushi, but not as much as sour cream--it is more Neil Simon than William Shakespeare: cute but shallow. This source material, on the other hand, could keep me busy for months. I could write a term paper on this. In fact, I give Princess Ida credit for rekindling a love of reading in me, as opposed to reading something simply to have read it.
Whenever I read Tennyson, my cheeks flush as though I've been drinking Port and suddenly tried to stand up. The lines are so delicious, so rich, than I can only take so much before it goes to my head and my faculties dull. The lines are addictive, however, so I continue to read, filling up with ideas that may never fully find expression. For instance, three things caught my eye about "The Princess". For one thing, Tennyson goes to great lengths to set things in threes. To a certain extent, One feels it is natural. there are, after all, three graces, three fates, etc. so it does not feel out of place at first. But Tennyson takes it beyond simple congruity. The lady Psyche inherits three castles. The students take a three year vow. Homer, Plato and Verulam are compared with Elizabeth, Joan and Sappho. "With Ida, Ida, Ida rang the woods" (IV.413). "On me, me, me the storm first breaks" (IV.478). The pattern is so recurrent as to border on the heavy handed, and one cannot help but wonder what Tennyson's point is.
Likewise, the the musical interludes that punctuate the various sections of the poem seem out of place. While the narrators iterate the virtues of women, their female counterparts sing mainly of childbirth, a topic barely touched in the body of the poem. What could be the point of that? And what is the recurring image of the fountain about?
The answer to all of this comes in another seemingly out of place item. WherIn fact, the answer almost always comes from something that seems out of place. I think I'll teach that to my students: if you trust the author, look for something that doesn't fit in. Herein lies the key to "The Princess":
"At last
[Ida] rose upon a wind of prohecy
Dilating on the future: 'everywhere
Two heads in council, two beside the hearth,
Two in the tangled business of the world,
Two in the liberal offices of life,
Two plummets dropt for one to sound the abyss
Of science and the secrets of the mind" II.153-160).
Heretofore, Tennyson has been seemingly obsessed with threes. They have been everywhere, seriously. And now he switches to twos for one brief moment; surely, meaning is afoot! Examining Ida's little speech more closely, one realizes that she thinks of perfection as an equal partnership, a duo, a team of two. Perhaps Tennyson disagrees with his eponymous creation. Perhaps he thinks of perfection, not as a sterile coupling, but as a trio: woman, man and child. The unnamed Prince (Gilbert christens him Hilarion) suggests as much to Ida when he speaks of "what every woman counts her due, / Love, children, happiness" (III.229ish-- I lost count). Ida's response is to call him a savage, but Tennyson is clearly on Hilarion's side throughout. Ida is a sympathetic, well-meaning but misguided character. Hilarion is the real hero. After all, what is a fountain without issue?
While these themes are interlaced throughout the poem, they are by no means the only thing wirth noting. I could write a treatise on this, easily. The idea of love dwelling in the valleys, in the shadows of life smells particularlly rich at first glance. But I am not in college right now, so nyah. Write it yourself.
BTD: 24, although this measure has become a bit meaningless.
As tedious and uninteresting as I found Tacitus' annals, I was surprised to become so involved in this volume. I attribute this to several factors:
Tacitus died writing the Histories. They are therefore shorter.
My attention span has improved since I read the Annals one year ago.
I came up with a cool pnemonic for the order of the Caesars: All the Caesars can never grow old! I intended to continue the sentence to include the entire parade of Caesars, until I realized that there were hundreds of them. These are the important ones, and I got bored, so I stopped.
Unlike the Annals, the History fits into my historical database nicely. As a child, I had certain dates and names drummed into my head, as they pertained to Biblical content. For instance, Sergius Paulus laid siege to Jerusalem, only to be called away.This gave the Christians, who were privy to prophecy, time to escape before Titus came back and levelled the place. What I didn't know at the time was the historical context of these events. The gherman tribes were rebelling, and the troops wree needed elsewhere. After Vespasian consolidated his power, his son (and successor) Titus was at liberty to deal with the Jews, of whom Tacitus say, ". . . their other customs, which are at once perverse and disgusting [no doubt referring primarily to the act of circumcision], owe their strength to their very badness" (V.5). Not only does Tacitus demonstrate the light in which the Romans held the Jews, he also sheds a bit of light on the enduring puzzle of Moses' punishment int he wilderness. In relating the history of the Jews, he records, " . . . they had sunk in all directions over the plain, when a herd of wild asses was seen to retire from their pasture to a rock shaded by trees. Moyses [sic] followed them, and, guided by the appearance of a grassy spot, discovered an abundant spring of water" (V.4). Although this does not entirely clear up the matter, it adds valuable information that was inconveniently left out of Genesis.
Tom Stoppard: Dirty Linen/ New Found Land, Dogg's Hamlet/Cahoot's Macbeth
I can think of no better description of Dirty Linen and the play within it, New Found Land, than Stoppard's own, which I have previously used to frame his entire oeuvre: " . . . the thing defines itself in practice first and foremost as recreation. This seems satisfactory."
As for the latter pair, It feels as though Neil Simon had a love child with Vaclav Havel. Stoppard's brilliant idea of taking Wittgenstein's theories about language to thier natural conclusion exemplifies what I think of his best work. In this and such other plays as Hapgood and Jumpers, he pokes fun at Philosophy while explicating philosophy in a genial and hilarious manner. Also of interest is his habit of plays within or beside plays, unrelated to each other and yet complementary. It is just simple entertainment, after all.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson: The Princess
Oh, William Schwenk Gilbert, you old rascal. Who else would think to dramatize a poem of Tennyson's? And I didn't even realize until I read it that "The Princess" is the source of Gilbert's "Princess Ida". However, as much as I love Gilbert and Sullivan--more than sushi, but not as much as sour cream--it is more Neil Simon than William Shakespeare: cute but shallow. This source material, on the other hand, could keep me busy for months. I could write a term paper on this. In fact, I give Princess Ida credit for rekindling a love of reading in me, as opposed to reading something simply to have read it.
Whenever I read Tennyson, my cheeks flush as though I've been drinking Port and suddenly tried to stand up. The lines are so delicious, so rich, than I can only take so much before it goes to my head and my faculties dull. The lines are addictive, however, so I continue to read, filling up with ideas that may never fully find expression. For instance, three things caught my eye about "The Princess". For one thing, Tennyson goes to great lengths to set things in threes. To a certain extent, One feels it is natural. there are, after all, three graces, three fates, etc. so it does not feel out of place at first. But Tennyson takes it beyond simple congruity. The lady Psyche inherits three castles. The students take a three year vow. Homer, Plato and Verulam are compared with Elizabeth, Joan and Sappho. "With Ida, Ida, Ida rang the woods" (IV.413). "On me, me, me the storm first breaks" (IV.478). The pattern is so recurrent as to border on the heavy handed, and one cannot help but wonder what Tennyson's point is.
Likewise, the the musical interludes that punctuate the various sections of the poem seem out of place. While the narrators iterate the virtues of women, their female counterparts sing mainly of childbirth, a topic barely touched in the body of the poem. What could be the point of that? And what is the recurring image of the fountain about?
The answer to all of this comes in another seemingly out of place item. WherIn fact, the answer almost always comes from something that seems out of place. I think I'll teach that to my students: if you trust the author, look for something that doesn't fit in. Herein lies the key to "The Princess":
"At last
[Ida] rose upon a wind of prohecy
Dilating on the future: 'everywhere
Two heads in council, two beside the hearth,
Two in the tangled business of the world,
Two in the liberal offices of life,
Two plummets dropt for one to sound the abyss
Of science and the secrets of the mind" II.153-160).
Heretofore, Tennyson has been seemingly obsessed with threes. They have been everywhere, seriously. And now he switches to twos for one brief moment; surely, meaning is afoot! Examining Ida's little speech more closely, one realizes that she thinks of perfection as an equal partnership, a duo, a team of two. Perhaps Tennyson disagrees with his eponymous creation. Perhaps he thinks of perfection, not as a sterile coupling, but as a trio: woman, man and child. The unnamed Prince (Gilbert christens him Hilarion) suggests as much to Ida when he speaks of "what every woman counts her due, / Love, children, happiness" (III.229ish-- I lost count). Ida's response is to call him a savage, but Tennyson is clearly on Hilarion's side throughout. Ida is a sympathetic, well-meaning but misguided character. Hilarion is the real hero. After all, what is a fountain without issue?
While these themes are interlaced throughout the poem, they are by no means the only thing wirth noting. I could write a treatise on this, easily. The idea of love dwelling in the valleys, in the shadows of life smells particularlly rich at first glance. But I am not in college right now, so nyah. Write it yourself.
BTD: 24, although this measure has become a bit meaningless.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh
This daunting epistolary turned out to be far better than expected. Although Van Gogh 's detailed descriptions of the paintings he was working on are not of particular interest to me, his thoughts on the books he read are quite enjoyable. As it happens, Van Gogh was quite a scholar, reading French and English authors, as well as his native Dutch, untranslated.
Among his favorites are my favorite author (although her hegemony is not as concrete as it once was), George Eliot, and Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. Eliot makes perfect sense. She fits right in with his favorite painters Millet and Delacroix, a portrayer of unassuming provincial life. But Bunyan is a more interesting choice. It is tempting, if Van Gogh had a taste for allegory, to look for allegory in his own work. This is especially true given the symbolic importance he gave to certain objects: sunflowers represented gratitude to Van Gogh, for instance. But if the paintings are to viewed as a "Pilgrim's Progress" of corts, as an allegorical journey, where is the pilgrim? It is Van Gogh himself. the vast majority of his paintings have the feeling of being visual snapshots, glances from the eye of a real person, and not artificial contsructs. These are things he saw and painted, his room, his bed, his chair, his boots, and they are loaded with allegorical symbolism. In fact, Van Gogh himself identified one of his chair still lifes as an allegorical portrait of Gaugin.
It is often mistakenly said that Van Gogh's last painting was "Wheat Field With Crows", an understandable mistake given the ominous tone of that painting. The truth is that many paintings were completed at the same time that final month of his life, and I prefer to think that the final--or at least the most relevant--of that group is "The Reaper". On his path, Van Gogh met many people, but it is this character whom he met last.
Among his favorites are my favorite author (although her hegemony is not as concrete as it once was), George Eliot, and Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. Eliot makes perfect sense. She fits right in with his favorite painters Millet and Delacroix, a portrayer of unassuming provincial life. But Bunyan is a more interesting choice. It is tempting, if Van Gogh had a taste for allegory, to look for allegory in his own work. This is especially true given the symbolic importance he gave to certain objects: sunflowers represented gratitude to Van Gogh, for instance. But if the paintings are to viewed as a "Pilgrim's Progress" of corts, as an allegorical journey, where is the pilgrim? It is Van Gogh himself. the vast majority of his paintings have the feeling of being visual snapshots, glances from the eye of a real person, and not artificial contsructs. These are things he saw and painted, his room, his bed, his chair, his boots, and they are loaded with allegorical symbolism. In fact, Van Gogh himself identified one of his chair still lifes as an allegorical portrait of Gaugin.
It is often mistakenly said that Van Gogh's last painting was "Wheat Field With Crows", an understandable mistake given the ominous tone of that painting. The truth is that many paintings were completed at the same time that final month of his life, and I prefer to think that the final--or at least the most relevant--of that group is "The Reaper". On his path, Van Gogh met many people, but it is this character whom he met last.
The Best American Short Stories of 2006
I think Ann Patchett put her finger on something here when she writes that "the short story is in need of a scandal." What she means, of course, is that it is in need of a publicist. The short story is treated as the ugly stepsister of the novel, but totally without cause. As Patchett observes, the quality of published short stories is generally stronger than that of novels, simply because it is less painful to abandon an unsuccessful short story than it is to give up on a novel you've been writing for years. Nonetheless, short stories are looked upon with a condescending eye, and I feel like subscribing to at least one short story/literary journal to make up for my haughtiness.
As for this particular collection, Patchett has made some nice shoices as editor. I don't feel like writing about each one, but here are the ones worth particular note:
Mark Slouka: "Dominion"
Benjamin Percy: "Refresh, Refresh" (My favorite of the volume)
Alice Munro: "The View From Castle Rock"
Kevin Moffett: "Tattooizm"
Robert Coover: "Grandmother's Nose" (worth teaching to my students)
As for this particular collection, Patchett has made some nice shoices as editor. I don't feel like writing about each one, but here are the ones worth particular note:
Mark Slouka: "Dominion"
Benjamin Percy: "Refresh, Refresh" (My favorite of the volume)
Alice Munro: "The View From Castle Rock"
Kevin Moffett: "Tattooizm"
Robert Coover: "Grandmother's Nose" (worth teaching to my students)
Adventures in Bible-reading
Judges
Whoa, did this book take a wrong turn around chapter 17. For the first two thirds, the book is as I remembered. Israel starts worshipping foreign gods. JEHOVAH gets irritated and sells them into captivity. Then he changes his mind and brings them a deliverer, a Judge. After Samson, however, they seem to have run out of heroes. The last section feels like another book entirely, as explained in the last verse: "In those days, there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes" (21:25). And oy gevalt, "what was right in their own eyes" tuns out to have been bizarre indeed!
As it turns out, a certain Levite's concubine "became angry with him, and she went away from him to her father's house" (19:2). He fetched her from Dad's house and they headed back home. On the way, they stopped in Gibeah, and a resident there offered to take them in. In the middle of the night, the residents of Gibeah banged on the door and demanded that the Levite come out so they could rape him. "Hell to the no!" he says. "Take my concubine instead. She was becoming a pain anyway."
"In the morning her master got up, opened the doors of the house, and when he wentout to go on his way, there was his concubine lying on the door of the house, with her hands on the threshold. "[Oh. You. I almost forgot.] Get up," he said to her, 'we are going." But there was no answer" (19:27-28).
This little scenario sounds familiar, but I'll get back to that. This was clearly an asshole thing to do. But what does he do? He cuts her up into 12 pieces and sends one to each of the tribal heads, whining, "Look what Gibeah did! Those jerks. Let's do something about it! What, my fault? Nonsense." So the other eleven tribes go down to Gibeah and fight against the Benjaminites, who defend their own. They lure the men out of the city, double back and kill all the women and children. To finalize everything, they all swear a curse upon anyone who gives a daughter in marriage to the tribe of Benjamin.
Of course, then Israel feels guilty because their little patriarchal society has been messed up by the elimination of a whole tribe. What to do? Repopulate it. After all, the men were not killed, just the women. Oh, wait. There is that little oath we took. Is there anyone who didn't take it? Aha! Jabesh-Gilead. There wasn't anybody here from Jabesh-Gilead. We can get wives for the Benjaminites from them!
So Israel goes to Jabesh-Gilead to get wives for the men whose wives they killed. They kill everyone in the city except all the young virgins, about 400 of them. Keep in mind that Jabesh-Gilead is one of their own cities. And 400 virgins is not enough for a whole tribe. So they go and steal the women of Shechem. And they all lived happily ever after.
That is about the most disgusting, bloodthirsty, misogynist thing I ever read. And the whole thing evidently happened "because the LORD had made a breach in the tribes of Israel" (21:15). I feel more strongly than ever that I cannot worship this LORD of whom they write. But from a literary perspective, I find it interesting the flavor of mythology that surrounds the whole book. It feels like the Israelites had a tough time and made up a narrative about it afterward. It almost like a Robert Louis Stevenson story. The elephant's nose is long, because an alligator pulled on it. The Leopard is spotted because he wrestled with the painted man. The Israelites were always in trouble because of the LORD's doing, not because they were assholes and shit happens. Related to this is the fact that at least part of this story overlaps with/cannibalizes the other story I hate, that of Lot. A pre-existing, well-known story nestled within a story is a sure sign of myth-making in my book.
Ruth
By way of contrast, this little book is a real delight. Ruth's song to Naomi is touching, and I may add it to my marriage ceremony if I ever go that route again. And the love admiration of Boaz for Ruth seems as genuine as any other in literature.
Whoa, did this book take a wrong turn around chapter 17. For the first two thirds, the book is as I remembered. Israel starts worshipping foreign gods. JEHOVAH gets irritated and sells them into captivity. Then he changes his mind and brings them a deliverer, a Judge. After Samson, however, they seem to have run out of heroes. The last section feels like another book entirely, as explained in the last verse: "In those days, there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes" (21:25). And oy gevalt, "what was right in their own eyes" tuns out to have been bizarre indeed!
As it turns out, a certain Levite's concubine "became angry with him, and she went away from him to her father's house" (19:2). He fetched her from Dad's house and they headed back home. On the way, they stopped in Gibeah, and a resident there offered to take them in. In the middle of the night, the residents of Gibeah banged on the door and demanded that the Levite come out so they could rape him. "Hell to the no!" he says. "Take my concubine instead. She was becoming a pain anyway."
"In the morning her master got up, opened the doors of the house, and when he wentout to go on his way, there was his concubine lying on the door of the house, with her hands on the threshold. "[Oh. You. I almost forgot.] Get up," he said to her, 'we are going." But there was no answer" (19:27-28).
This little scenario sounds familiar, but I'll get back to that. This was clearly an asshole thing to do. But what does he do? He cuts her up into 12 pieces and sends one to each of the tribal heads, whining, "Look what Gibeah did! Those jerks. Let's do something about it! What, my fault? Nonsense." So the other eleven tribes go down to Gibeah and fight against the Benjaminites, who defend their own. They lure the men out of the city, double back and kill all the women and children. To finalize everything, they all swear a curse upon anyone who gives a daughter in marriage to the tribe of Benjamin.
Of course, then Israel feels guilty because their little patriarchal society has been messed up by the elimination of a whole tribe. What to do? Repopulate it. After all, the men were not killed, just the women. Oh, wait. There is that little oath we took. Is there anyone who didn't take it? Aha! Jabesh-Gilead. There wasn't anybody here from Jabesh-Gilead. We can get wives for the Benjaminites from them!
So Israel goes to Jabesh-Gilead to get wives for the men whose wives they killed. They kill everyone in the city except all the young virgins, about 400 of them. Keep in mind that Jabesh-Gilead is one of their own cities. And 400 virgins is not enough for a whole tribe. So they go and steal the women of Shechem. And they all lived happily ever after.
That is about the most disgusting, bloodthirsty, misogynist thing I ever read. And the whole thing evidently happened "because the LORD had made a breach in the tribes of Israel" (21:15). I feel more strongly than ever that I cannot worship this LORD of whom they write. But from a literary perspective, I find it interesting the flavor of mythology that surrounds the whole book. It feels like the Israelites had a tough time and made up a narrative about it afterward. It almost like a Robert Louis Stevenson story. The elephant's nose is long, because an alligator pulled on it. The Leopard is spotted because he wrestled with the painted man. The Israelites were always in trouble because of the LORD's doing, not because they were assholes and shit happens. Related to this is the fact that at least part of this story overlaps with/cannibalizes the other story I hate, that of Lot. A pre-existing, well-known story nestled within a story is a sure sign of myth-making in my book.
Ruth
By way of contrast, this little book is a real delight. Ruth's song to Naomi is touching, and I may add it to my marriage ceremony if I ever go that route again. And the love admiration of Boaz for Ruth seems as genuine as any other in literature.
Discount Grab Bag Assortment
The following were read in preparation for teaching a Science Fiction Literature course next semester.
Jules Verne: "Master Zacharius"
Seminal and engaging, but difficult to follow at points. This would be a good text to introduce the idea of "playing God" as it appears in sci-fi lit.
H.G. Wells: "The Crystal Egg"
The "incredible device" genre is one that seems to pop up frequently, and this is a quick and easy example. One approach to sci-fi is to look it as a way of questioning society's assumptions and asking "What if?" This would be a good choice for that aproach.
Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Disintegration Machine"
Another "incredible device," this would be nice to teach side by side with "The Crystal Egg" to show how sci-fi was changed by WWI. All of a sudden, knowledge is dangerous, another recurring theme. Just wait until Hiroshima, bitches.
Jack Williamson: "The Metal Man" I wouldn't teach this. It's interesting, but not clear. These are high school students, after all.
Jules Verne: "Master Zacharius"
Seminal and engaging, but difficult to follow at points. This would be a good text to introduce the idea of "playing God" as it appears in sci-fi lit.
H.G. Wells: "The Crystal Egg"
The "incredible device" genre is one that seems to pop up frequently, and this is a quick and easy example. One approach to sci-fi is to look it as a way of questioning society's assumptions and asking "What if?" This would be a good choice for that aproach.
Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Disintegration Machine"
Another "incredible device," this would be nice to teach side by side with "The Crystal Egg" to show how sci-fi was changed by WWI. All of a sudden, knowledge is dangerous, another recurring theme. Just wait until Hiroshima, bitches.
Jack Williamson: "The Metal Man" I wouldn't teach this. It's interesting, but not clear. These are high school students, after all.
Monday, May 07, 2007
For my next trick . . .
I shall try something I have not done since College: try to tie three completely different books together thematically: Joshua, Mark Doty: My Alexandria, and John Coetzee: Waiting for the Barbarians.
***
Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated. Not only you, but your relationship, your nation, each worldly possession and whatever you're feeling at this very moment will melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew. All flesh is grass. This too shall pass.
This is why Empire is a terrible idea, as Coetzee observes: "What has made it impossible for us to live like fish in water, like birds in air, like children? It is the fault of Empire! . . . Empire has located its existence, not in the smooth recurrent spinning time of the cycle of the seasons but in the jagged time of rise and fall. Of beginning and end, of catastrophe" (131). In Waiting for the Barbarians, Coetzee creates an allegorical world where The Empire, as empires do, tries to strengthen its borders as proof against the foe of any empire, The Barbarians. But this Empire discovers exactly what America has: the more one attacks, the more one is attacked; the very action of attack is destructive to oneself. In fact, The Barbarians really have nothing to do with the fall of The Empire in Coetzee's book. Its demise is completely self-inflicted.
And one wonders if the same is not true of the nation of Israel--not just in modern times, but even at its heyday as a power. By Coetzee's reasoning, "Every place that the sole of your feet shall tread upon I have given to you. . . No one shall be able to stand against you." turns out to be pretty rotten advice (Joshua 1:3-4). For one thing, the prediction was false. Certain tribes resisted the Israelites; their conquest was not the blowout they had been promised. "They did not, however drive out the Canaanites who lived in Gezer: so the Canaanites have lived wihtin Ephraim to this day," a fact which is a pity for modern Israel; the Canaanites were the forerunners of modern Palsetinians (16:10). Neither did they drive out the Geshurites, the Maacathites or the Jebusites. And yet, the writer of Joshua claims that "The LORD gave them rest on every side, just as he had sworn to their ancestors; not one of all their enemies had withstood them for the LORD had given all their enemies into their hands" (21:44). If only. For the Judean Empire is a classic example of "the jagged time of rise and fall" Coetzee describes. As I prepare to reread Judges, I remember its contents: Israel is rescued by the LORD. Israel sins. Israel is reconquered (as punishment). Repeat ad infinitum. What Joshua takes for a tesimony to Israel's power, I take as a seal on their doom: "[The LORD] gave you a land on which you had not labored, and towns that you had not built, and you live in them; you eat the fruit of vineyards and oliveyards that you did not plant" (24:13). Such an empire can not only be expected to return tot he dust, it should be encouraged to do so.
And what is true for political empire is true for the little empires we build around ourselves as well. Mark Doty does an excellent job of describing this in My Alexandria, a delightfully cohesive volume that makes and destroys little cities on every page. I almost wrote an entire post on "Demolition," I found it so dense and layered. It took me actual research and rereading to extract its full efect, an effort to which I am not used. The poem describes a building that the author is watching fall, but is peppered with seemingly random episodes that I was at first unable to tie together. What do Oscar Wilde, Robert Lowell, and the monument to General Shaw (which I have actually seen) have to do with this building? The key, after the fourth or so reading, came in the seemingly out of place word, "we". "Waitaminnit," I realized, "Who's we?" As it turns out, the entire thing is about watching the last pieces of a failed relationship fall, and in retrosopect it is too obvious. If you read the poem, you may understand the difficulty of analysis and forgive me my thickheadedness. Most poems in this volume bear up under similar scrutiny, and I will take time out from my topic to just mention that "Difference" is one of the best poems I have ever read, but what it says cannot be communicated in words, at least not by me. Read it. In its way, though, it is also about the undulating pulse of the universe, against which it is futile, but more importantly desstructive, to resist. We are all slowly "becoming a meadow," ebbing and flowing through our existence, which doesn't belong to us at all (Becoming a Meadow). We are all music, " gather[ing] and tumbl[ing] / like water collecting in a fountain / all hesitation and sudden release" (Lament-Heaven). But nonetheless, we all--even those of us who know better--try to build empires. "If we are all continuous," Doty observes, "rippling from nothing into being / why can't we let ourselves go?" (Lament-Heaven).
BTD 16
***
Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated. Not only you, but your relationship, your nation, each worldly possession and whatever you're feeling at this very moment will melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew. All flesh is grass. This too shall pass.
This is why Empire is a terrible idea, as Coetzee observes: "What has made it impossible for us to live like fish in water, like birds in air, like children? It is the fault of Empire! . . . Empire has located its existence, not in the smooth recurrent spinning time of the cycle of the seasons but in the jagged time of rise and fall. Of beginning and end, of catastrophe" (131). In Waiting for the Barbarians, Coetzee creates an allegorical world where The Empire, as empires do, tries to strengthen its borders as proof against the foe of any empire, The Barbarians. But this Empire discovers exactly what America has: the more one attacks, the more one is attacked; the very action of attack is destructive to oneself. In fact, The Barbarians really have nothing to do with the fall of The Empire in Coetzee's book. Its demise is completely self-inflicted.
And one wonders if the same is not true of the nation of Israel--not just in modern times, but even at its heyday as a power. By Coetzee's reasoning, "Every place that the sole of your feet shall tread upon I have given to you. . . No one shall be able to stand against you." turns out to be pretty rotten advice (Joshua 1:3-4). For one thing, the prediction was false. Certain tribes resisted the Israelites; their conquest was not the blowout they had been promised. "They did not, however drive out the Canaanites who lived in Gezer: so the Canaanites have lived wihtin Ephraim to this day," a fact which is a pity for modern Israel; the Canaanites were the forerunners of modern Palsetinians (16:10). Neither did they drive out the Geshurites, the Maacathites or the Jebusites. And yet, the writer of Joshua claims that "The LORD gave them rest on every side, just as he had sworn to their ancestors; not one of all their enemies had withstood them for the LORD had given all their enemies into their hands" (21:44). If only. For the Judean Empire is a classic example of "the jagged time of rise and fall" Coetzee describes. As I prepare to reread Judges, I remember its contents: Israel is rescued by the LORD. Israel sins. Israel is reconquered (as punishment). Repeat ad infinitum. What Joshua takes for a tesimony to Israel's power, I take as a seal on their doom: "[The LORD] gave you a land on which you had not labored, and towns that you had not built, and you live in them; you eat the fruit of vineyards and oliveyards that you did not plant" (24:13). Such an empire can not only be expected to return tot he dust, it should be encouraged to do so.
And what is true for political empire is true for the little empires we build around ourselves as well. Mark Doty does an excellent job of describing this in My Alexandria, a delightfully cohesive volume that makes and destroys little cities on every page. I almost wrote an entire post on "Demolition," I found it so dense and layered. It took me actual research and rereading to extract its full efect, an effort to which I am not used. The poem describes a building that the author is watching fall, but is peppered with seemingly random episodes that I was at first unable to tie together. What do Oscar Wilde, Robert Lowell, and the monument to General Shaw (which I have actually seen) have to do with this building? The key, after the fourth or so reading, came in the seemingly out of place word, "we". "Waitaminnit," I realized, "Who's we?" As it turns out, the entire thing is about watching the last pieces of a failed relationship fall, and in retrosopect it is too obvious. If you read the poem, you may understand the difficulty of analysis and forgive me my thickheadedness. Most poems in this volume bear up under similar scrutiny, and I will take time out from my topic to just mention that "Difference" is one of the best poems I have ever read, but what it says cannot be communicated in words, at least not by me. Read it. In its way, though, it is also about the undulating pulse of the universe, against which it is futile, but more importantly desstructive, to resist. We are all slowly "becoming a meadow," ebbing and flowing through our existence, which doesn't belong to us at all (Becoming a Meadow). We are all music, " gather[ing] and tumbl[ing] / like water collecting in a fountain / all hesitation and sudden release" (Lament-Heaven). But nonetheless, we all--even those of us who know better--try to build empires. "If we are all continuous," Doty observes, "rippling from nothing into being / why can't we let ourselves go?" (Lament-Heaven).
BTD 16
Sunday, April 08, 2007
recent acquisitions
My to read stack has been growing at far too rapid a pace.
Aeshylus: The Oresteia
I had read Agamemnon halfheartedly in college, so I didn't realize just how rich it is. Even in what is no doubt an imperfect translation, Aeschylus' thematic unity and imagery is thickly layered and the very model of what I call "Literary". If I was still in college, I would probably be inspired to write my paper on the symbolical use of raiment, but I'm not, so pbblt.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Memories of my Melancholy Whores
This book took me for a ride in more than one way. It was, as expected, an adventure in characterization as only Marquez can do it. After "One Hundred Years of Solitude", I wondered whether he could ever create men as memorable as the women in that book. Here is the proof. But the ride was also one of expectation postponed. The book is umistakably leading up to the main character's death. It opens on his ninetieth birthday, and winds up on his niety-first. As he ages another year, the world falls apart around him--his cat, his house, his workplace--seemingly in preparation for his death. It is characteristically appropriate that the year's adventure revolves around his courtship of a fourteen-year-old virgin, whom sleeps with only literally, never taking her virginity, while the man himself is born on August 29,th a Virgo. Anyone who has reada books could see the signs: the man is journeying inevitably to his death. It almost becomes another "Chronicle of a Death Foretold".
But it turns out to be a Chronicle of a Death Forestalled. I had to reread the last page several times to assure myself that the man had not died after all. He didn't die. Miraculously, in the last paragraph, the house was restored, the cat recovered, and he set out looking forward to his one hunderedth birthday. Why? Why Had Marquez not done what every other author would have done (except that every other author would have done it)? Why had he spent an entire book preparing the reader for a death that never happened?
"I . . . measure my life, not in years, but in decades," he says at one point. Every tenth birthday, beginning with his fiftieth, he has been struck by a deep sense of his mortality. The book, then becomes, not a chronicle of death, but of mortality--a subtle distinction--the mortality of birthdays. Each decade is indeed, as Marquez observes, a moment of pause, of recognition. And it is that pause which Marquez is chronicling, although he doesn't tip his hand until the last page.
The Way of Chuang Tzu (Edited by Thomas Merton)
Hui Chi said to Chuang Tzu:
"All your teaching is centered on what has no use" (153).
Herein lies the charm of this book. How useful it is to be useless indeed.
Aeshylus: The Oresteia
I had read Agamemnon halfheartedly in college, so I didn't realize just how rich it is. Even in what is no doubt an imperfect translation, Aeschylus' thematic unity and imagery is thickly layered and the very model of what I call "Literary". If I was still in college, I would probably be inspired to write my paper on the symbolical use of raiment, but I'm not, so pbblt.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Memories of my Melancholy Whores
This book took me for a ride in more than one way. It was, as expected, an adventure in characterization as only Marquez can do it. After "One Hundred Years of Solitude", I wondered whether he could ever create men as memorable as the women in that book. Here is the proof. But the ride was also one of expectation postponed. The book is umistakably leading up to the main character's death. It opens on his ninetieth birthday, and winds up on his niety-first. As he ages another year, the world falls apart around him--his cat, his house, his workplace--seemingly in preparation for his death. It is characteristically appropriate that the year's adventure revolves around his courtship of a fourteen-year-old virgin, whom sleeps with only literally, never taking her virginity, while the man himself is born on August 29,th a Virgo. Anyone who has reada books could see the signs: the man is journeying inevitably to his death. It almost becomes another "Chronicle of a Death Foretold".
But it turns out to be a Chronicle of a Death Forestalled. I had to reread the last page several times to assure myself that the man had not died after all. He didn't die. Miraculously, in the last paragraph, the house was restored, the cat recovered, and he set out looking forward to his one hunderedth birthday. Why? Why Had Marquez not done what every other author would have done (except that every other author would have done it)? Why had he spent an entire book preparing the reader for a death that never happened?
"I . . . measure my life, not in years, but in decades," he says at one point. Every tenth birthday, beginning with his fiftieth, he has been struck by a deep sense of his mortality. The book, then becomes, not a chronicle of death, but of mortality--a subtle distinction--the mortality of birthdays. Each decade is indeed, as Marquez observes, a moment of pause, of recognition. And it is that pause which Marquez is chronicling, although he doesn't tip his hand until the last page.
The Way of Chuang Tzu (Edited by Thomas Merton)
Hui Chi said to Chuang Tzu:
"All your teaching is centered on what has no use" (153).
Herein lies the charm of this book. How useful it is to be useless indeed.
Friday, March 23, 2007
On a Roll
Numbers
This was, as expected, tedious in parts, but there were also some interesting insights. I find it interesting that the key conflicts of the book center on the idea of "holiness". Korah, Dathan and Abiram claim that , "the whole congregation are every one of them holy," and are promptly swallowed up by the Earth. Moses and Aaron are banished from the promised land because of failing to 'show [God's] holiness before the people." So what is this holiness? If so important, why is it not explained in detail? As a teacher, I want to see a rubric for holiness; what are the criteria?
I have always equated holiness in my mind to the idea of being set apart for a special purpose. But this must not be what JEHOVAH had in mind when he punished, since the Israelities could not have been more set apart than they were. What was their sin? Why were they repeatedly decimated with plague, war and poisonous serpents? Is it because they were whiny? If so, holiness as meant in Numbers must mean humble, passive and yielding. this does not fit with any definition I can think of.
But the real question is, "Why were Moses and Aaron punished?" As far as I can tell, JEHOVAH told them to strike water from the rock, they did, and he got mad. There must be some hole in the narrative. Last item of interest: The father of Moses, Aaron and Miriam appears, in the geneologies, to be their great uncle as well. Their mother married her uncle. Why is this never mentioned, or is it a trick of translation?
Richard Byrd: Alone
This memoir, while engaging and erudite, smells of pretense. Richard Byrd seals a place for himself as a typical Bourgeois hero: a man of advantage and education who goes through a dark night of the soul, and waxes philosophically about it. Occasionally he drops a nice turn of phrase, such as, "The stars were so bright, I wanted to reach out and scoop up a handful of the sparkling pebbles," which, for some reason, I found quite poetic. But for the most part, he simply tries too hard. His goal is to maintain civility, not to let emotion overwhelm him, and to prove his manhood, none of which are particularly inspiring goals.
Steven D. Levitt,Stephen J. Dubner : Freakonomics
This is the first book in a while that I have been unable to put down at night, and have foregone sleep to finish. Yet, in retrospect, I cannot put my finger on what it is that was so engrossing. The book was poorly constructed, not illiterate, but illiterary. The subjects were of interest, but not enough to quell my ADD as it did. Maybe there is an economical explanation for it. But I'm bored now. BTD: 10 Goodbye.
This was, as expected, tedious in parts, but there were also some interesting insights. I find it interesting that the key conflicts of the book center on the idea of "holiness". Korah, Dathan and Abiram claim that , "the whole congregation are every one of them holy," and are promptly swallowed up by the Earth. Moses and Aaron are banished from the promised land because of failing to 'show [God's] holiness before the people." So what is this holiness? If so important, why is it not explained in detail? As a teacher, I want to see a rubric for holiness; what are the criteria?
I have always equated holiness in my mind to the idea of being set apart for a special purpose. But this must not be what JEHOVAH had in mind when he punished, since the Israelities could not have been more set apart than they were. What was their sin? Why were they repeatedly decimated with plague, war and poisonous serpents? Is it because they were whiny? If so, holiness as meant in Numbers must mean humble, passive and yielding. this does not fit with any definition I can think of.
But the real question is, "Why were Moses and Aaron punished?" As far as I can tell, JEHOVAH told them to strike water from the rock, they did, and he got mad. There must be some hole in the narrative. Last item of interest: The father of Moses, Aaron and Miriam appears, in the geneologies, to be their great uncle as well. Their mother married her uncle. Why is this never mentioned, or is it a trick of translation?
Richard Byrd: Alone
This memoir, while engaging and erudite, smells of pretense. Richard Byrd seals a place for himself as a typical Bourgeois hero: a man of advantage and education who goes through a dark night of the soul, and waxes philosophically about it. Occasionally he drops a nice turn of phrase, such as, "The stars were so bright, I wanted to reach out and scoop up a handful of the sparkling pebbles," which, for some reason, I found quite poetic. But for the most part, he simply tries too hard. His goal is to maintain civility, not to let emotion overwhelm him, and to prove his manhood, none of which are particularly inspiring goals.
Steven D. Levitt,Stephen J. Dubner : Freakonomics
This is the first book in a while that I have been unable to put down at night, and have foregone sleep to finish. Yet, in retrospect, I cannot put my finger on what it is that was so engrossing. The book was poorly constructed, not illiterate, but illiterary. The subjects were of interest, but not enough to quell my ADD as it did. Maybe there is an economical explanation for it. But I'm bored now. BTD: 10 Goodbye.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Ted Kooser: Delights and Shadows
I made a mistake when I started to read this book. I mistook Kooser for another Billy Collins, another engaging, idiomatic poet whose chief virtue is his accesibility. Collins has a way with imagery, but I take his work to be brothy, meatless. At first, I thought Kooser was the same.
The first thing that tipped me off to something more in this volume was the consistency of topic. Poem after poem in this collection is a profound metaphorical analysis of a simple household object or a mundane image: a jar of buttons, a girl holding a gyroscope, creamed corn, a telescope. Kooser wows repeatedly with his take on these silly little items, but the fact that he focuses time and again on the same sort of seemingly innocuous image tips the reader off to something more. Many poets write an ode to something stupid like a Grecian urn, but a whole volume of such things simply must be about something more.
That something more came into focus when I read the poem "Father". Kooser says that the father's voice was "delighted with stories", nicely skewed turn of phrase in its own right. But the word "delight" is also in the title, which makes an alert reader take notice. From that point, I was watchful for the words "delight" and "shadow" in the poems, eagerly looking for a connection. Of course "Delights and Shadows" is a perfectly subtle and suitable title without anything deper--and it took thick ole me a while to realize the play on "lights and shadows". But when one realizes that by delights Kooser means "Stories", as in "Father", and that by shadows he means "Ghosts", as in "Pearl", the whole volume takes shape.
Each object, each image that Kooser dissects into its poetic components has a story, a delight, and a ghostly shadow as well. The "Flow Blue China" overflows with stories of heapingly generous meals, and the ghost of a seventy-year-old woman reaches out from the sentences. No object is dead or inanimate. Each is an amphora, possessed with the spirits of the dead who used it. And it is not merely his personal memories , his own dead, Kooser seals into these poems like mausoleums. "Four Civil War Paintings by Winslow Homer" contains the delights and shadows of an entire country.
What is amazing is that Kooser does all of this while never obscuring his meaning or alienating his reader. One never really is asked to decipher these poems, simply to meet them. At last a good poet that I can send to my brother without recieving a text message to the effect, "WTF? I dont get it."
The first thing that tipped me off to something more in this volume was the consistency of topic. Poem after poem in this collection is a profound metaphorical analysis of a simple household object or a mundane image: a jar of buttons, a girl holding a gyroscope, creamed corn, a telescope. Kooser wows repeatedly with his take on these silly little items, but the fact that he focuses time and again on the same sort of seemingly innocuous image tips the reader off to something more. Many poets write an ode to something stupid like a Grecian urn, but a whole volume of such things simply must be about something more.
That something more came into focus when I read the poem "Father". Kooser says that the father's voice was "delighted with stories", nicely skewed turn of phrase in its own right. But the word "delight" is also in the title, which makes an alert reader take notice. From that point, I was watchful for the words "delight" and "shadow" in the poems, eagerly looking for a connection. Of course "Delights and Shadows" is a perfectly subtle and suitable title without anything deper--and it took thick ole me a while to realize the play on "lights and shadows". But when one realizes that by delights Kooser means "Stories", as in "Father", and that by shadows he means "Ghosts", as in "Pearl", the whole volume takes shape.
Each object, each image that Kooser dissects into its poetic components has a story, a delight, and a ghostly shadow as well. The "Flow Blue China" overflows with stories of heapingly generous meals, and the ghost of a seventy-year-old woman reaches out from the sentences. No object is dead or inanimate. Each is an amphora, possessed with the spirits of the dead who used it. And it is not merely his personal memories , his own dead, Kooser seals into these poems like mausoleums. "Four Civil War Paintings by Winslow Homer" contains the delights and shadows of an entire country.
What is amazing is that Kooser does all of this while never obscuring his meaning or alienating his reader. One never really is asked to decipher these poems, simply to meet them. At last a good poet that I can send to my brother without recieving a text message to the effect, "WTF? I dont get it."
Monday, March 19, 2007
The Odd Couple
I am so far behind in my blooking that I shall probably never catch up, but hackneyed hyperbole aside, I shall crank out a few easy ones while I have a moment.
Leviticus
I expected this to be a boring read, having only pretended to read the Bible in the past, but I actually got a little out of it. It may one day be interesting to study the different types of sacrifice the Israelites were commanded to offer--elevation offerings, burnt offerings, atonement offerings, sin offerings, far to many to remember at present. One particular thing I noticed is that the Bible--at least the Hebrew Scriptures portion--does not seem to mean what we think it might when it speaks of "sacrifice". I have always assumed that the Israelites took their sacrifical animal up to the altar, threw it to its fate, and returned home. Having read Leviticus now, I think otherwise. They seem to have led their animal up to the altar, slaughtered it, and returned home with most of the meat. Sacficial offereing seems not to have been sacrifice as we think of it so much as ritual butchering. They kill the animal, throw a few pieces on the fire, and eat the rest. I'm not sure what significance this clarification has, except to say that sacrifice is indeed not so much about giving something up, but about living a certain way--ritually even. Also, The Witnesses insist that the prohibition against eating blood in Leviticus is grounds for refusing blood transfucions today, but they neglect to notice that the Israelites were also prohibited from eating fat. Put that in your fondue, why dontcha?
Mencius
I like to think of this as "Confucianism for Dummies". This is nothing against Confucius, but Mencius followers seem to have kept a bit better track of what he actually said than Confucius' followers did. "The Analects" reads like a random assortment of quotes, many of them completely inscrutable. Mencius' works, on the other hand, have at least some narrative line and seem to form a more cohesive ideology. The gist of this ideology is that "Human Nature is good just as water seeks low ground" (VI.a). Although a man can be made bad just as water can be held in an artificial container, it is not man's natural state, just as it is not natural for water to be still. This is why, as Mencius observes, no matter how terrible and debased a man is, when he sees a child about to fall into a well his first instinct is of concern. He may or may not act on that instant of alarm, but he experiences it instinctively.
None of which I find particularly revolutionary, but Mencius is at times delightfully idiomatic. Allow me to share some of my favorites:
"One accepts willingly only what is one's proper destiny . . . it is never anyone's proper destiny to die in fetters" (VII.a).
"You can never succeed in winning the allegiance of men by trying to dominate them through goodness" ( IV.b).
"Only when a man will not do some things is he capable of great things" (IV.b).
Leviticus
I expected this to be a boring read, having only pretended to read the Bible in the past, but I actually got a little out of it. It may one day be interesting to study the different types of sacrifice the Israelites were commanded to offer--elevation offerings, burnt offerings, atonement offerings, sin offerings, far to many to remember at present. One particular thing I noticed is that the Bible--at least the Hebrew Scriptures portion--does not seem to mean what we think it might when it speaks of "sacrifice". I have always assumed that the Israelites took their sacrifical animal up to the altar, threw it to its fate, and returned home. Having read Leviticus now, I think otherwise. They seem to have led their animal up to the altar, slaughtered it, and returned home with most of the meat. Sacficial offereing seems not to have been sacrifice as we think of it so much as ritual butchering. They kill the animal, throw a few pieces on the fire, and eat the rest. I'm not sure what significance this clarification has, except to say that sacrifice is indeed not so much about giving something up, but about living a certain way--ritually even. Also, The Witnesses insist that the prohibition against eating blood in Leviticus is grounds for refusing blood transfucions today, but they neglect to notice that the Israelites were also prohibited from eating fat. Put that in your fondue, why dontcha?
Mencius
I like to think of this as "Confucianism for Dummies". This is nothing against Confucius, but Mencius followers seem to have kept a bit better track of what he actually said than Confucius' followers did. "The Analects" reads like a random assortment of quotes, many of them completely inscrutable. Mencius' works, on the other hand, have at least some narrative line and seem to form a more cohesive ideology. The gist of this ideology is that "Human Nature is good just as water seeks low ground" (VI.a). Although a man can be made bad just as water can be held in an artificial container, it is not man's natural state, just as it is not natural for water to be still. This is why, as Mencius observes, no matter how terrible and debased a man is, when he sees a child about to fall into a well his first instinct is of concern. He may or may not act on that instant of alarm, but he experiences it instinctively.
None of which I find particularly revolutionary, but Mencius is at times delightfully idiomatic. Allow me to share some of my favorites:
"One accepts willingly only what is one's proper destiny . . . it is never anyone's proper destiny to die in fetters" (VII.a).
"You can never succeed in winning the allegiance of men by trying to dominate them through goodness" ( IV.b).
"Only when a man will not do some things is he capable of great things" (IV.b).
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Plans
If I complete at least these books this year, I shall declare it a success.
I will delete books from this list as I complete them.
Elfriede Jelinek: Die Klavierspielerin
Donald Hall: White Apples and the Taste of Stone
Psalms
Proverbs
Ecclesiastes
Song of Solomon
A Course in Miracles
Harold Pinter: Collected Plays
Theodore White: Thunder out of China
Jeffrey Eugenides: Middlesex
Doug Wright: I Am My Own Wife
Shakespeare: Titus Andronicus, , Troilus and Cressida
Murasaki: The Tale of Genji
That should do it. Everything else is frosting.
I will delete books from this list as I complete them.
Elfriede Jelinek: Die Klavierspielerin
Donald Hall: White Apples and the Taste of Stone
Psalms
Proverbs
Ecclesiastes
Song of Solomon
A Course in Miracles
Harold Pinter: Collected Plays
Theodore White: Thunder out of China
Jeffrey Eugenides: Middlesex
Doug Wright: I Am My Own Wife
Shakespeare: Titus Andronicus, , Troilus and Cressida
Murasaki: The Tale of Genji
That should do it. Everything else is frosting.
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Orhan Pamuk: My Name is Red
My (Completely unsupported and only partially thought out) contention is that the line between mind-blowing literature and just another good book is not in the message so much as the medium. TO be specific, my favorite feeling is the electric realization that the medium of a book is, or at least is inextricably intertwined with, the message. It is on this ground that I declare My Name is Red to be MBL, well worth reading many times in succession.
One would think that all Nobel Laureates would deserve the MBL award, but not so. I was thoroughly disappointed by V.S. Naipal, and Gao Xingjian was too . . . well, nobody reads this. Why not say it? Chinese. but Pamuk does nearly everything right, thus restoring my faith in Norway. To begin with, he does exactly what one should do with a book about art of any kind: make the structure of the book--the medium--reflect the content of the art being discussed. Therefore, while My Name is Red discusses illuminators, textual illustrators, during the rule of the Ottoman Empire, Pamuk sets the book in a series of textual portraits. His mastery of voice makes each character completely compelling in his or her own right. The effect is of leafing through a beautifully illuminated manuscript--without pictures.
As the book develops, the reader is asked to piece the various first-person narratives together to get an accurate picture of what happens. Pamuk makes several inspired turns on this basic idea, and each adds to the depth of the novel. For one thing, several of the narrators are avowedly unreliable. While Shekure often edits herself or changes her mind about what happened, one of the characters writes in two voices. In one guise, he confesses that his other narrative is filled with lies. In all of these fragments, the narrators speak tot he reader in the second person. They are keenly aware of their audience, and work to manipulate the opinion of whoever happens to be holding the book. This cannot fail to draw the reader into the story, to engage him or her with the mystery, the love story and the deeper messages of the text. Since the book is speaking to "You", you cannot help but answer.
But the deepest moments don't come from the story at all, but from those chapters narrated by the pictures themselves. Death, Satan, a gold coin, and a dog all have something to contribute to the tale, and, as the most objective storytellers, offer the most insight. Nowhere is this more true than in the semi-eponymous chapter "I Am Red". Narrated by the very color, this chapter unlocks the entire rest of the novel. Red reminds us that it is everywhere: "the wings of angels, the lips of maidens, the death wounds of corpses and severed heads bespeckled with blood" (186). How appropriate, then, that when Enishte Effendi dies, he ascends to a heaven that is not colored red, it is redness itself. In his encounter with the redness of God, Ensishte wonders if he will be unished for painting in the style of the infidel Franks. "East and West belong to me" is the reply (228). Red is everywhere.
In a final turn of the narration, Pamuk iinserts himself into the story. By cleverly mentioning Shekure's son Orhan only in passing, Pamuk makes sure that the reader does not make the connectionwith his own name until the last few pages. In those pages, he reveals that it is he, Orhan Shekure's son from the 16th century, that has been writing. Orhan, his mother tells us, has no gift for painting and "is foolish enough to be logical in all matters" (412). It falls to him to present the story of his family in the only way he can, in a brilliant, intricate novel. Knowing this, now I have to read it again.
One would think that all Nobel Laureates would deserve the MBL award, but not so. I was thoroughly disappointed by V.S. Naipal, and Gao Xingjian was too . . . well, nobody reads this. Why not say it? Chinese. but Pamuk does nearly everything right, thus restoring my faith in Norway. To begin with, he does exactly what one should do with a book about art of any kind: make the structure of the book--the medium--reflect the content of the art being discussed. Therefore, while My Name is Red discusses illuminators, textual illustrators, during the rule of the Ottoman Empire, Pamuk sets the book in a series of textual portraits. His mastery of voice makes each character completely compelling in his or her own right. The effect is of leafing through a beautifully illuminated manuscript--without pictures.
As the book develops, the reader is asked to piece the various first-person narratives together to get an accurate picture of what happens. Pamuk makes several inspired turns on this basic idea, and each adds to the depth of the novel. For one thing, several of the narrators are avowedly unreliable. While Shekure often edits herself or changes her mind about what happened, one of the characters writes in two voices. In one guise, he confesses that his other narrative is filled with lies. In all of these fragments, the narrators speak tot he reader in the second person. They are keenly aware of their audience, and work to manipulate the opinion of whoever happens to be holding the book. This cannot fail to draw the reader into the story, to engage him or her with the mystery, the love story and the deeper messages of the text. Since the book is speaking to "You", you cannot help but answer.
But the deepest moments don't come from the story at all, but from those chapters narrated by the pictures themselves. Death, Satan, a gold coin, and a dog all have something to contribute to the tale, and, as the most objective storytellers, offer the most insight. Nowhere is this more true than in the semi-eponymous chapter "I Am Red". Narrated by the very color, this chapter unlocks the entire rest of the novel. Red reminds us that it is everywhere: "the wings of angels, the lips of maidens, the death wounds of corpses and severed heads bespeckled with blood" (186). How appropriate, then, that when Enishte Effendi dies, he ascends to a heaven that is not colored red, it is redness itself. In his encounter with the redness of God, Ensishte wonders if he will be unished for painting in the style of the infidel Franks. "East and West belong to me" is the reply (228). Red is everywhere.
In a final turn of the narration, Pamuk iinserts himself into the story. By cleverly mentioning Shekure's son Orhan only in passing, Pamuk makes sure that the reader does not make the connectionwith his own name until the last few pages. In those pages, he reveals that it is he, Orhan Shekure's son from the 16th century, that has been writing. Orhan, his mother tells us, has no gift for painting and "is foolish enough to be logical in all matters" (412). It falls to him to present the story of his family in the only way he can, in a brilliant, intricate novel. Knowing this, now I have to read it again.
Monday, January 15, 2007
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
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.
Monday, January 01, 2007
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
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
Sunday, November 12, 2006
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.
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.
Monday, September 04, 2006
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?
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?
Saturday, August 12, 2006
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
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
Monday, July 31, 2006
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
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
Monday, July 10, 2006
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.
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.
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