tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-135732252024-03-12T22:42:28.196-04:00Brown StudyBooks, music, and the things that make the world a better place.Selenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16303596216112203977noreply@blogger.comBlogger204125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13573225.post-27052098173151503952021-05-18T13:56:00.004-04:002021-06-14T15:30:34.759-04:00Presidential Parade<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1386925509l/6462.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="308" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1386925509l/6462.jpg" /></a></div><br />Blogging once per year is probably not how you're supposed to do it. One might think living through the weirdness of a pandemic would provide ample time... but no. Instead, I've been outside gardening, running, reading, herding cats (literal cats), and as they say in commercials, "And so much more!" Occasionally working.<p></p><p>But in the random way I come up with things, I started thinking about how my Presidential knowledge was lacking -- I couldn't name them in order and some I just would completely forget (Van Buren? Fillmore?). So, of course, the answer is to read a biography/history of each President of the U.S. in order. I had a few under my belt: David McCullough's <i>John Adams</i> and <i>Truman</i>; Ron Chernow's <i>Grant </i>(also Grant's memoirs), Joseph Ellis' <i>American Sphinx</i> (Jefferson). I'll also count Garry Wills' <i>Lincoln at Gettysburg</i>, although I intend to read a fuller biography in his time.</p><p>Now, I don't think I can do 600+ pages on everyone, so I've been looking for solid but concise works by reputable historians. I began with good old Washington by the reliable Ellis. Don't need to know what all they ate for breakfast and every memo ever written -- just the good stuff, the important stuff. So far, I've been pleased with the <a href="http://americanpresidentsseries.com/booklist.asp" target="_blank">American Presidents Series</a>, edited by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and Sean Wilentz. These short biographies are just what I was looking for -- hitting the most important contributions while including enough of the life, character, and personality to make it interesting.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/510GKhiQTYL._SX334_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="336" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/510GKhiQTYL._SX334_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" width="135" /></a></div><br />So far, I've read Garry Wills on Madison, Gary Hart on James Monroe, and Robert Remini on John Quincy Adams. I've just departed from the series to read Remini's biography of Andrew Jackson, since that copy was lying around the house. So that's where I am, rolling through the Founding Fathers and getting the big sweep of American history in all its problematic, ugly, surprising, rousing, and sometimes downright unbelievable weirdness. <p></p><p>One big takeaway so far, is that those early guys were downright <u>obsessed</u> with Alexander Hamilton. So at some point, I'll have to depart and finally read that biography. (I'm lagging behind the rest of the globe and still haven't even seen Hamilton the musical. Even so, I always see Lin Manuel in my mind's eye). Seriously, it was like he was the Devil to Republicans (old style, that is), and it becomes clear how someone eventually was going to murder the guy. Of course, they ended up adopting his ideas afterwards. (Burr -- another piece of work who I'll have to read more about later.) </p><p>A thing I like about this project is seeing the next holders of the office developing and working in the background during the term of their predecessors. I'm just now seeing that wily Martin Van Buren (!) working his angles in Jackson's administration. Jackson. Now there's a character. I have laughed aloud at Remini's descriptions of the various brawls and duels, often descending into what he calls "low comedy," especially when the horses ran away with the pistols as Jackson attempted to deal with John Sevier. Horses were like <i>y'all need to calm the fuck down</i>. And they really did.</p><p>Just as seeing the future presidents popping into the background of the current subject's term, I've also enjoyed the sidelight of recognizing the men whose names are very familiar to me as <i>place names</i>. Growing up in Virginia, near the Tennessee/Kentucky/North Carolina border, I see Alexander Smyth (Smyth County), Henry Tazewell, William Blount, John Sevier, Henry Wise, William Lenoir, Henry Clay... and the list goes on. It can really send you down a rabbit hole. One emerges from the hole sometimes wondering, should we be naming something after a guy who was expelled from the Senate for treason? Really? (That would be Blount, for the record.) So many shenanigans.</p><p>And of course, the most tragic and wrenching part is seeing, how, from the very beginning, without doubt, each President saw very clearly that slavery was going to be the thing that tore apart the union. It was so obvious that they kept putting it off for the next administration/generation to deal with. But they knew, and it gnawed at them because it was so diametrically opposed to the principles that the whole American enterprise stood for. At the same time, the treatment of Native Americans provides the other thread of woe. So needless to say, it puts a lot in perspective that has been glossed over, excused, ignored, and whitewashed in a lot of history classes in a lot of places. I remember what mine were like, and it's pretty groan-worthy.</p><p>As dismaying as the history sometimes is, I know it's important to revisit -- and in some cases, discover for the first time -- this deeply complicated origin story of America. It makes so many things clear. It puts the present sordid history in proper context. It exposes the roots of our most complex and most nonsensical arguments. I probably shouldn't even get started on the "well-regulated militia." Ask Washington how well regulated it was. Ask Monroe.</p><p>I'll continue to read along and I might even give an update every now and then. Possibly, I'll slow my pace at some point or spend time reading a real doorstopper. Meanwhile, Van Buren and Fillmore, here I come.</p>Selenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16303596216112203977noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13573225.post-72886862907694262082020-04-30T16:23:00.000-04:002020-04-30T16:23:41.954-04:00Pandemic and the Power of Magical Thinking<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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During the present Covid-19 outbreak, I return again and again to the question: What are people thinking? Why are they engaging in denial, reckless behavior, conspiracy theories, protests, and astounding callousness regarding acceptable death rates? The latter aspect being the only time that science, specifically “math,” is permitted into a debate where one side argues for letting the virus do its work in killing people. Such a very <i>modest proposal</i>. Putting aside the very real animators of a lot of this pro-death tribe – racism, xenophobia, entitlement, greed, and plain old stupid, what gives?<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2mpE6qJx72nIWk3J2Ht39u6gCpfzrV7vXzbJhk1imtqj0C_VwDxJJeNNYq-EIUOSv95e4J-NzarTJ7xtEv8V3A5w1esu9dqGnlS6Xpo8eA-L7Sdv5DPR8wfS4s37GL48ZnwUw-g/s1600/Paul_F%25C3%25BCrst%252C_Der_Doctor_Schnabel_von_Rom_%2528coloured_version%2529.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="798" data-original-width="570" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2mpE6qJx72nIWk3J2Ht39u6gCpfzrV7vXzbJhk1imtqj0C_VwDxJJeNNYq-EIUOSv95e4J-NzarTJ7xtEv8V3A5w1esu9dqGnlS6Xpo8eA-L7Sdv5DPR8wfS4s37GL48ZnwUw-g/s320/Paul_F%25C3%25BCrst%252C_Der_Doctor_Schnabel_von_Rom_%2528coloured_version%2529.png" width="227" /></a></td></tr>
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Folks in the Middle Ages may be excused some of their panic and anxiety. There was no science at the time to help them understand the origins of the Black Plague. If I were at the Port of Messina in 1347 when the ships put in with mostly dead and dying crews, covered in boils, oozing blood and pus, I might have been looking to the skies for a phalanx of celestial beings ready to do battle. I might have expected volcanic eruptions, eclipses, and earthquakes. Or my immediate action might be almost exactly the same as now – taking swiftly to my heels for home and a jug of Sicilian wine. Be that as it may, when the Black Death traveled throughout Europe, shopkeepers closed up, priests neglected Last Rites, and people avoided each other … like the Plague. Even without the benefit of microbiologists, epidemiologists, and infectious disease experts, they pretty well divined at least some of what to do and what not to do. Mask-wearing during plague times was definitely in vogue.<br />
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So we’ve hurtled on to the 21st Century in the midst of global pandemic, knowing far more precisely where it came from and how it spreads, and yet a great many Americans aren’t convinced that shops should close, and people should stay away from one another – and maybe that should include gathering at churches. Apparently, some adherents got off track super-early in the Bible when they read Cain’s sneery, defensive reply to God on the whereabouts of Abel. Since God put a protective mark on the lout for doing his brother in, well, perhaps the wrong lesson was learned.<br />
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Hanging around the Internet comments and listening to the increasingly phantasmagoric national briefings, I’ve arrived at one possible explanation. The lazy way out of thinking scientifically and acknowledging the inevitability of really rotten truths is to believe in Magic. We are sotted by it. We toss essential spiritual teachings out the window in favor of the miraculous and magical elements of our various religions. Taking care of the old, sick, and poor? Loving peace, hating war? Forget all that rot, and get on with the water-into-wine and sea-partings.<br />
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Not just God, the Devil, and the entire cast and characters of Paradise Lost, but we’re accompanied daily by all of the unseen world: ghosts, fairies, guardian angels, witches, evil spirits, Sasquatches, aliens, and demons. Contemporary Knights Templar are just loitering in the cafes of Rome and Paris, drinking espressos and planning the Apocalypse (the big loud one – not this crappy, slow, dumb one).<br />
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Scholars more clever than I could make a good argument that the mass of people now are as much in thrall to magic and the supernatural as at any time in the Middle Ages. After all, you can “prove” literally anything simply by posting a manipulated image or video, creating a bot to do your bidding, or grossly enhancing your personal appeal on Tinder. And someone will believe it. Magic!<br />
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Magical thinking makes viruses “just disappear one day” even while there are billions of readily available hosts to propagate it. It makes the greedy and callous believe that death will come only for those <i>other people</i> who they believe are expendable.What, me worry? Brave protesters who normally love to arrive at Confederate statues or Second Amendment rallies masked and geared up, all of a sudden experience a serious violation of their civil rights when it’s suggested a mask might serve a salutary purpose in public. Okay, that last one isn’t magical thinking, it’s just the plain old stupid. But magical thinking does make you believe you’re a Constitutional scholar.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/17/far-right-coronavirus-protests-restrictions" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="453" data-original-width="620" height="233" src="https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/266ec3f00238475270b8c92b6ae12e79c3423c10/0_0_3500_2556/master/3500.jpg?width=620&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=201650b05e4db8037beebd02f2f49110" width="320" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #767676; font-family: "Guardian Text Sans Web", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, "Lucida Grande", sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-variant-ligatures: common-ligatures; text-align: start;"><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/17/far-right-coronavirus-protests-restrictions" target="_blank">Photograph: Seth Herald/Reuters</a></span></td></tr>
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Magical thinking explains why people can’t wrap their minds around the immensity of geologic time but readily accept a heavenly, feathered infinitude after death or Rapture. So even if the worst happens, they are sucked out of all the worry and mess the rest of us heathens face. To a Better Place. One might call it <i>The Good Place</i>. Uh-oh.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #999999; font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 8.8px; text-align: start;">Image: </span><a href="https://www.nbc.com/the-good-place/photos/whenever-youre-ready/3428276" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: rgb(153, 153, 153) !important; cursor: pointer; font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 8.8px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: start; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Colleen Hayes / NBC | 2019 NBCUniversal Media, LLC</a></td></tr>
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Magical thinking makes people believe they are invulnerable because they know the occult secrets of essential oils, bleach, blow dryers on high heat, and hydroxychloroquine. And, like, really bright light. Like radiation. Which kills things. Indiscriminately.<br />
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Lest I sound like a total killjoy, realize that I like a lot of magical things myself. My reading life would be an arid wasteland without it. My favorite miraculous event is spontaneous combustion. So whimsical and sanitary. I have a list of targets in my head. And yet, not one single occurrence in real life. NOT ONE, despite what Dickens' described as the unfortunate fate of Mr. Krook in <i>Bleak House</i>:<br />
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The cat has retreated close to it and stands snarling, not at them, at something on the ground before the fire. There is a very little fire left in the grate, but there is a smouldering, suffocating vapour in the room and a dark, greasy coating on the walls and ceiling.</blockquote>
I also want us to solve the problem of intergalactic travel, because I’m betting there are some extraterrestrials out there with better ideas. They probably have universal health care. I like elves and changelings, haints and spirits. But I don’t look to any of them coming to my aid, or alternatively, causing me harm.<br />
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We are a world awash in the unseen. Is it any wonder that an unseen virus gets the same magical treatment? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some spells to cast.Selenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16303596216112203977noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13573225.post-1338387864822122582019-05-27T23:24:00.002-04:002019-05-27T23:26:01.613-04:00First novel by Abi Andrews - The Word for Woman is Wilderness<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0722/2871/products/The-Word-for-Woman-is-Wilderness-novel-Abi-Andrews-Two-Dollar-Radio_61ea3d94-2171-41f1-a1fe-65c9f1ca899f_2048x2048.jpg?v=1552581902" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="443" height="320" src="https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0722/2871/products/The-Word-for-Woman-is-Wilderness-novel-Abi-Andrews-Two-Dollar-Radio_61ea3d94-2171-41f1-a1fe-65c9f1ca899f_2048x2048.jpg?v=1552581902" width="236" /></a></div>
Picked this book the old-fashioned way -- just browsing at the local bookstore. I had never heard of it, but it sounded intriguing. I love nature writing and there was something about it that put me in mind of Annie Dillard's <i>A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek</i>, which is one of my favorite books.<br />
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The story is told in the first person by a 19-year-old English woman named Erin, who embarks on a journey to the wilderness of Alaska alone. She is testing herself, and seeking to find a woman's perspective on the "mountain man-adventurer" tradition that has shut out women for most of history.<br />
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It is a feminist quest and an investigation of what it means to leave everything behind and live in solitude. She asks the deeper questions of what "wilderness" means and what is the boundary between wild and not-wild. Where does the human element -- male or female -- fit into nature?<br />
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Along the journey, Erin engages with the voices that have inspired, goaded, confused, or just pissed her off. Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold, Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber), Thoreau, Isaac Newton, Einstein, and the astronauts who first went into space and to the Moon.<br />
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The ghost of Chris McCandless (<i>Into the Wild</i>) hovers over her journey as both cautionary tale and inspiration. The specter of the Doomsday Clock is also there. How long before we make the planet uninhabitable? Is there a way to avoid it? What has driven us to the brink of potential extinction when we have the means to save ourselves?<br />
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This is a thinking-person's novel -- it makes you engage with Erin's questions and her ruminations on serious topics, whether you agree with what she's saying or not. As an adventure tale alone, it is pretty gripping. The trek takes Erin from Iceland and Greenland across all of Canada, carpooling, couch-surfing, and hitchhiking. One of the things the novel does is show that just being a woman traveling alone is a harrowing adventure all on its own.<br />
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Andrews sprinkles in a lot of science and history fact and her nature descriptions are beautifully done. It's a unique novel and one that I think will stick with me for a long while. It's a great choice to kick off a summer of reading.Selenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16303596216112203977noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13573225.post-9846414655269046462019-03-03T20:41:00.003-05:002019-03-03T23:13:59.084-05:00Plant-based beginning - Baked rigatoniI’ve thought about eating vegetarian for awhile but instead of going cold turkey, I’m moving slowly into it. I decided to move away from meat for several reasons: I hate the idea of factory farms and miserable animals. I don't think it's sustainable, especially in the current state of the environment. I don't know what's in the meat, and I think that <i>meatless</i> is healthier overall. Actually, I do feel better, even after only about a month on the new program. And by "program" I mean only the one I'm making up for myself as I go along. In any case, I’ll be cooking vegetarian a lot of the time. Tonight, I made a roasted vegetable baked rigatoni. It was good and easy too.<br />
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You can choose any vegetables, but I used a mix of cauliflower, red pepper, onion, zucchini, carrot, and portobello mushrooms tossed in olive oil, pepper, salt - enough for a full sheet pan. Bake at 375 for around 30-40 minutes. I chopped up chard and basil into 16 oz of cottage cheese, one egg, a sprinkle of nutmeg, salt, and ground pepper.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikMqK-lSkfh5nNZ5OrlAhi9ZobJdmWwX1Um52hcET0p3n6sjuoPHpchHpCX80d7nAYjf-15KHacbmO5GQIj06_oOIPKggrsFXEHKoVVzT2QjkrB0ebmUQx10AkQYy-fSrH6lU8PA/s1600/BD57F9C6-A582-48C7-8895-961DB141787B.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikMqK-lSkfh5nNZ5OrlAhi9ZobJdmWwX1Um52hcET0p3n6sjuoPHpchHpCX80d7nAYjf-15KHacbmO5GQIj06_oOIPKggrsFXEHKoVVzT2QjkrB0ebmUQx10AkQYy-fSrH6lU8PA/s320/BD57F9C6-A582-48C7-8895-961DB141787B.jpeg" width="240" /></a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsRV4QFbYYtQARx_-BLIaBi2WIYw__f6-Xv8EGeDAycBt2iAb6pSOAoUz0o6UGlS2b_umUOwS44D3r5b68wRMR-HSPs1MazxUAnHkWsNQx0Op8US0Fttr1cbmb9GlXHvEAUquoDg/s1600/schiavonis.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1000" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsRV4QFbYYtQARx_-BLIaBi2WIYw__f6-Xv8EGeDAycBt2iAb6pSOAoUz0o6UGlS2b_umUOwS44D3r5b68wRMR-HSPs1MazxUAnHkWsNQx0Op8US0Fttr1cbmb9GlXHvEAUquoDg/s200/schiavonis.jpg" width="200" /></a>Meanwhile , cook the pasta just to al dente and pour most of a 24-28 oz marinara sauce into it. I love the spicy marinara from our local Italian grocery, but any sauce you like will work. Even homemade! Fold the veggies into the pasta and sauce.<br />
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Then you just layer like you would a lasagna - pasta sauce mix with the cheese mix, and a last layer of sauce and mozzarella on top. Bake at 375 for about 35 minutes.<br />
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Very yummy! You can do a lot with roasted vegetables to take the place of meats -- particularly in pasta dishes. </div>
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<br />Selenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16303596216112203977noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13573225.post-20170590119373168862019-01-20T12:30:00.000-05:002019-01-20T12:35:50.653-05:00Code Girls by Liza Mundy<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSCK2r81g6ZqotphNHU1-dmmlxts25ffS6Go_tKexHs3wn-OXMW4_fQdEqnhwf4D1vEw5U5le7pj27R7t_xyvbKD5qwG_Bupr-Emi9xVkBF7Csm5RU8ACpSBOEj1dStC_7Kq2-qg/s1600/CodeGirlsAMZ.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="332" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSCK2r81g6ZqotphNHU1-dmmlxts25ffS6Go_tKexHs3wn-OXMW4_fQdEqnhwf4D1vEw5U5le7pj27R7t_xyvbKD5qwG_Bupr-Emi9xVkBF7Csm5RU8ACpSBOEj1dStC_7Kq2-qg/s320/CodeGirlsAMZ.jpg" width="212" /></a>This is a wonderfully researched book that brings well-deserved recognition to the American women who worked on breaking enemy codes during World War 2. Because it was so secret and remained so many years after the war, their work went largely unacknowledged until recently.<br />
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The Navy largely recruited from northern women's colleges like Vassar, Wellesley, and Smith, looking for young women studying languages and math. The Army competed for talent by going to rural towns in the South, and found many young schoolteachers. The sociological aspect is fascinating on its own: all these young women leaving their homes, colleges, and families to live in Washington D.C. for war work that they couldn't discuss with anyone. They had to tell people they were secretaries, sharpening pencils and emptying trashcans.<br />
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The prewar work of exceptional women who pioneered the field of cryptology and cryptanalysis forms the background for what came after, and Mundy describes the methods of both code-makers and code-breakers for those who can follow the puzzling craft.<br />
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Mundy's writing is very engaging, and her epilogue at the end, telling what happened to many of the featured women in the book is very moving. She interviewed as many of the women as she could find, many of whom still found it difficult to talk about their work because secrecy was so ingrained in their experience.<br />
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<br />Selenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16303596216112203977noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13573225.post-11422301305293528052019-01-01T22:18:00.000-05:002019-01-15T00:30:00.314-05:00My Year in Books, or How I Stayed Sane in 2018<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEissu1_jAp7-ejx7kk1pNy_ImCCIXr8Vi4ODs6vPtdJ285EF4CpXMyOeL9i42fS-Abnf6Yexlfc9leZY9vSYTZQv6Qvnn7Z-aUVfZdmdJTPpsbxirTSR2HsLS_CjKPGZ0_ja2O5Sw/s1600/quiet+passion+movie.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1440" data-original-width="960" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEissu1_jAp7-ejx7kk1pNy_ImCCIXr8Vi4ODs6vPtdJ285EF4CpXMyOeL9i42fS-Abnf6Yexlfc9leZY9vSYTZQv6Qvnn7Z-aUVfZdmdJTPpsbxirTSR2HsLS_CjKPGZ0_ja2O5Sw/s200/quiet+passion+movie.jpg" width="133" /></a>A year of absurdity, cruelty, stupidity, violence, and barbarism must be countered with what poor means we have, even if it's only the intermittent escape into the imagination of a storyteller, the craft of the poet, or the fresh perspective of a historian. I was apparently too anxious, distracted, and generally discombobulated to actually write in detail about any of the books I read last year, so I offer up this summary and hope to do better in 2019.<br />
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I rang out 2017 with Emily Dickinson, accompanied by the brilliant commentary of Helen Vendler, and came away with new appreciation and even awe for the unpredictable genius of Amherst. I also loved that beautiful movie with Cynthia Nixon as Dickinson. <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2392830/" target="_blank">Highly recommended</a>! I enjoyed the Vendler so much, I also ordered her book on Shakespeare's Sonnets but I haven't finished working my way through it. I expect I'll spend some time with it this winter for bedtime reading.<br />
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In January 2018 I was finishing Ron Chernow's <i>Grant</i>. If ever one was in need of an actual American hero, this was the time. A flawed man who was greater than his flaws, Grant embodied courage -- both physical and mental -- quiet stoicism, loyalty, intelligence, toughness. He was an honest man surrounded by liars and cheats and rogues in the White House -- not quite an inversion of the present moment since the current resident heartily approves of the liars, cheats, and rogues surrounding the black hole of amorality that sucks in the weak and witless. But I digress.<br />
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Contemplating Grant's life, the catastrophe of the Civil War, and the nasty politics of the post-war period from the vantage point of 2018 events was often depressing, actually. So as much as I admired Chernow's writing and erudition and enjoyed my immersion in Grantland, I ran away immediately into the fabled and mystical world of early Britain. Finally, I read Marion Zimmer Bradley's <i>The Mists of Avalon</i>, which turns the Arthurian legend into the Morganan legend.<br />
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I read books and authors long on my list like Betty Smith's <i>A Tree Grows in Brooklyn;</i> my first Iris Murdoch, <i>Nuns and Soldier</i>s; Katherine Anne Porter's <i>Pale Horse, Pale Rider</i>; and Aphra Behn's <i>Orooknoko</i>. I expect there's a lot more Murdoch to come. Muriel Spark's sharp and quirky <i>Ghost Stories</i> was a fun Halloween read.<br />
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There were also contemporary authors. Tommy Orange's <i>There, There</i> about modern Native American life in Oakland deserved all its accolades. It brings the shameful history of America's treatment of Native American's into the present with all its consequences. By turns funny, heartbreaking, endearing, and fierce, Orange has created something that will stand for a long time. Rachel Cusk's Trilogy (<i>Outline</i>, <i>Transit</i>,<i> Kudos</i>) is a subtle, melancholy expression of one woman's losses through the seemingly random interactions and conversations she has with both strangers and intimates.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1hEAwNcxiJo212NXYotvh3iZ4IhohqeewSI5wDUnJStjEZ2Q7WQYuHAZbS2pALoLj7zlx5OMIeYVgXyNuTn_ji8NpyeFY3mhlC6pSzlMlFp4wb23hVLNVmHGK23y9KyHNimfaRw/s1600/delapava.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="329" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1hEAwNcxiJo212NXYotvh3iZ4IhohqeewSI5wDUnJStjEZ2Q7WQYuHAZbS2pALoLj7zlx5OMIeYVgXyNuTn_ji8NpyeFY3mhlC6pSzlMlFp4wb23hVLNVmHGK23y9KyHNimfaRw/s200/delapava.jpg" width="131" /></a>One of the most creative and unique novels of the year, Sergio de la Pava's page-turning and almost uncategorizable<i> Lost Empress </i>dabbles playfully and intelligently in many novel genres -- alternative history/time travel, heist, prison escape, sports triumph, thriller, romance, legal, and comic. De La Pava is a working public defender in New York, so how he finds time to write such a<i> tour de force</i> is beyond me. For sheer ambition and narrative scale, he reminds me of China Miéville.<br />
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I finished the year with a new favorite, <i>The Essex Serpent</i>, by Sarah Perry. I loved the cast of characters and the setting in late Victorian England. A mythical sea dragon seems to be haunting the inhabitants of a rural Essex town, forcing them to consider their sins and shortcomings as signs that a legendary monster is coming for them.<br />
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Two notable non-fiction books of the year were Jennifer Ackerman's <i>The Genius of Birds</i>, an entertaining exploration of the particular intelligence of several birds species, including crows, chickadees, and sparrows, among other more exotic feathered creatures. Susan Orlean tells the story of the epic LA Public Library fire in 1986, which despite it's historic destruction, was overshadowed by the events at Chernobyl. It is a mystery, a history, and a love letter to libraries, making a case for the importance and significance of libraries in American life and culture.<br />
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It was also a year of revisiting some of my literary heroes: A.S. Byatt's <i>The Game</i>, Cormac McCarthy's <i>The Outer Dark</i>, Rebecca West's<i> Cousin Rosamund, </i>Vita Sackville-West's<i> All Passion Spent, </i>and William Maxwell's <i>So Long, See You Tomorrow. </i>I also spent some time rereading a good bit of Spenser's <i>Faerie Queen</i> and Philip Sidney's <i>Astrophel and Stella</i>.<br />
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I only read two non-English speaking authors: <i>The Summer Book</i> by Finn Tove Jansson and Elena Ferrante's <i>My Brilliant Friend</i>.<br />
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I'm feeling the pull of classics in 2019 - I'll probably drop back into Trollope and Dickens' Victorian England. Maybe Woolf, although there's not much I haven't already read. I hear they are republishing a Rose Macaulay novel, which I'll probably get my hands on too. Maybe I'll re-read <i>Middlemarch </i>or <i>Adam Bede </i>(or <i>Daniel Deronda</i>...). I can't get enough of Eliot. She's good for the brain and the heart, and always so startlingly insightful about what motivates people.Selenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16303596216112203977noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13573225.post-86956602272414611802017-11-19T00:38:00.002-05:002017-11-19T00:41:44.693-05:00KA: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr by John Crowley<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The unheralded arrival of John Crowley's newest novel is itself a deep mystery to me. He is a writer of astonishing skill and imagination, able to weave the otherworldly into the historical and the everyday. He can make you believe in the unseen, make you wonder if, in fact, he has knowledge of other realms beyond our own through the power of his fictions.<br />
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You would think that writing an acknowledged masterpiece, <i><a href="http://littlebig25.com/" target="_blank">Little Big</a></i>, would put him more squarely in the center of the literary map, but his latest book seems to have dropped into the world with very little fanfare. It seems a shame on the one hand, but on the other, deliciously like his art -- a secret door to pass through that not everyone is able to see.<br />
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Ka is the story of a crow, Dar Oakley, and the Ymr that is in ruin is our own world, the world of People. The narrator of the novel is an old man, living on after the death of his wife in a brink-of-apocalypse future that seems depressingly familiar. The environment is poisoned, his own days are numbered, all seems ready to collapse. But he rescues a sick crow from his backyard and learns that this is no ordinary crow. Little by little, they learn to communicate, and the epic story that unwinds is Dar Oakley's -- an immortal creature who has witnessed human history from the time of Pre-Christian Europe to these last gasping days in which it seems possible that humans have almost managed to extinguish themselves.<br />
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Dar remembers when he first saw humans, back before crows had names (he is the first to have given himself a name, a custom that later crows eventually took up). He tells how he entered the realm of people, how he unwittingly stole the gift of immortality from them, and how he established special connections with only a few over his long life -- a span which brought him from the Old World to the New World of America. Dar is able to enter into the realm of the dead and return. He has died many deaths, but resurrects, and each time he carries with him the accrued memories of his former lives among Crows -- and People.<br />
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Crowley's novel is magical, but it isn't just entertaining fantasy. It is a story <i>about the stories</i> we tell ourselves -- how we bear to live and think to die. It's about the deep mystery of language. Dar is just alien enough from the human sphere to offer observations that are both disturbing and poignant.<br />
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In the aftermath of the Civil War (one of the Great Dyings he is witness to), Dar is able to see the struggling dead souls, still murmuring their last thoughts before dying, still wandering, unable to rest because they were never claimed or were buried unknown.<br />
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Pity. He felt it in his breast and in his hooded eyes when at dawn he roosted to sleep in hiding. He had no name for it because he was the first Crow ever to feel it within him. Pity for them in the awful complications of the lives they built for themselves, laboring as helplessly and ceaselessly as bees building their combs, but their combs held no honey, he thought. Useless, useless, and worse than useless, needless: the labor of their lives, the battles and deaths, and all their own doing. </blockquote>
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I would recommend Crowley to any serious reader, but especially if you are a fan of Michael Chabon, who counts Crowley as an influence. I also think of George Saunders and Cormac McCarthy.<br />
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Ka is a book of wonders -- both funny and tragic, profoundly moving and deeply humane. And you'll never look at a crow in quite the same way after reading it.Selenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16303596216112203977noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13573225.post-65138763464662074702017-08-06T21:54:00.000-04:002017-08-06T21:56:43.431-04:00Thoreau: A Life by Laura Dassow Walls<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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There's not much I can add to the critical acclaim this biography has already received. For pure reading enjoyment, it is one of the best books of its kind. You feel as if you're as close to an understanding of Thoreau as a 200-year gap makes possible. Walls gives us a well-rounded portrait of the man and the writer in all his genius and eccentricities.<br />
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Here, you see both the Thoreau who was socially awkward and prickly, who once accidentally set his beloved woods on fire, right beside the warm, energetic Concord citizen who cheerfully led the children out berrying and taught them about nature. If you needed a shed built, a house lot surveyed, a cellar stoned, or a plant identified, Thoreau was always there.<br />
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The dreaming Transcendentalist was the same man who figured out a better manufacturing process for the family's pencil business -- who could build his own boat, bed, chair, or house. He grew and entered prize-winning melons at the county fair, made a living as a surveyor, helped runaway slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad, and stood up for John Brown, even as the fiery abolitionist was being hanged for treason after the raid at Harper's Ferry. But he was still always the dreamer and philosopher -- turning his minute observations of the natural world into ecstatic nature writing, poetry, scientific inquiry, and spiritual epiphany.<br />
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One of the most moving things about Thoreau was his continuing struggle to confront and respond to a world that was deeply troubling. His Walden years weren't about becoming a hermit and disengaging -- he was trying to learn how to live a different life, an honest one, that didn't lend support to a culture already turning to overconsumption and indifference to the environment and to a government exterminating Native Americans, making unnecessary wars of conquest, allowing slavery to exist and expand. Walden was a two-year experiment which Walls' book illuminates as only one part of his extraordinary American life.<br />
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Walls is often dazzling in her ability to describe the line of Thoreau's thought, as here, when he is contemplating the changing world in the face of industry and commerce.<br />
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As the raw wound of the railroad's "deep cut" thaws and flows, he sees in the flowing sands the canvas of creation, revealing the great truth that we live not on the surface of a dead planet but in and through a living earth, like a leaf unfolding.</blockquote>
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And after reading 500 pages of Thoreau's biography, you feel as if you're just embarking on a journey -- being led back into his writing, and ready to tackle the most primary source of all -- the Journals that Thoreau kept for almost all of his adult life.<br />
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<br />Selenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16303596216112203977noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13573225.post-90253758266941690322017-07-09T22:36:00.001-04:002017-07-09T22:45:01.270-04:00Henry David Thoreau, July 12,1817<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Walden Pond, 2013<br />
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Not by design, but reading new biography by Laura Dassow Walls. <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Henry-David-Thoreau-Laura-Dassow/dp/022634469X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1499654378&sr=8-1&keywords=dassow+walls" target="_blank">Thoreau: A Life</a></i><br />
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<b>Happy 200th Birthday!</b><br />
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<i><br /></i>Selenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16303596216112203977noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13573225.post-78717959228053255362017-01-22T19:26:00.000-05:002017-01-22T19:26:56.792-05:00Peacock and Vine: Byatt on William Morris and Mariano Fortuny<i>Peacock and Vine</i> is a long, thoughtful, and loving essay by A.S. Byatt musing on two famous designers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The book itself is a beautiful object, with glossy pages and gorgeous prints and photographs.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Victoria & Albert Museum, "Trellis" wallpaper by William Morris.</span></td></tr>
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Englishman William Morris was the main influence on the Arts and Crafts movement, a return to traditional methods of producing textiles and decorative art. His designs feature intricate patterns of floral and animal prints and other folk motifs, hearkening back to Medieval and Renaissance styles. He was closely associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood of artists founded by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Sometimes the association was a little too close, considering Morris's wife Jane's relationship with Rossetti, who among other things, liked to paint her.<br />
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Byatt explains how she came to understand Morris in a kind of counterpoint to the southern aesthetic of the Spaniard Mariano Fortuny, who lived and worked in his 13th-century Venetian palazzo with his wife and artistic partner Henriette Negrin. Fortuny worked as a painter, photographer, etcher, theatrical designer, and couturier. One of his most famous designs is the Delphos dress.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Victoria & Albert Museum, "Delphos" by Fortuny</td></tr>
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Fortuny was inspired by the simplicity of ancient Greek designs and the idea to "free" the female form from corsets and layers of undergarments.<br />
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Byatt's wonderful novel <i>The Children's Book,</i> focused on a community of artists during the same period (William Morris makes an appearance), and this book is another product of her interest in the question of how great art is made.<br />
<br />Selenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16303596216112203977noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13573225.post-83043690996259889562017-01-15T22:18:00.000-05:002017-01-15T22:24:58.881-05:00General William Tecumseh Sherman, prose stylist<div class="separator tr_bq" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKsCz_DUoBGQVf_nhqs2xp-G7IQznN-Vfo8JRYnsZnyBUrRg1zGwMxVofjN3wrMXzMfaDkQRPVXtI0uqAwbmi7hbt2QhMF4i12dL_FHLY2SM-wuQ9KsXyNJsKLbu00juemsAfUnw/s1600/300px-William-Tecumseh-Sherman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKsCz_DUoBGQVf_nhqs2xp-G7IQznN-Vfo8JRYnsZnyBUrRg1zGwMxVofjN3wrMXzMfaDkQRPVXtI0uqAwbmi7hbt2QhMF4i12dL_FHLY2SM-wuQ9KsXyNJsKLbu00juemsAfUnw/s320/300px-William-Tecumseh-Sherman.jpg" width="251" /></a></div>
I spent November and December of last year reading the memoirs of General Sherman, reminding myself that the country had been through some pretty bad times before the election of 2016.<br />
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Sherman has a fascinating reputation. If you're from the south, he is a brute, inflicting needless cruelty on a civilian population on his March to the Sea. Otherwise, he is known as a brilliant strategist, a fighter, fiercely loyal, but perhaps a little unhinged. Reading his own words, I was struck by his intelligence and unrelenting belief in the rightness of the Union cause.<br />
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Sherman describes his early life in very light strokes. There is not much that is personal, only the highlights. He went to West Point, noting that he was not valued as much of a soldier, but he was a very good student. Unlike Grant, whose standing was at the bottom of his class, Sherman graduated number six in his class and would have been fourth had it not been for numerous demerits received in other areas (apparently tidiness was not among his strengths).<br />
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Sherman's early career took him to the Indian wars in Florida and service along the southern coastal forts. He spent the Mexican War in California, then a remote outpost, when San Francisco was a fledgling city. He wrote the report - sent by boat around Cape Horn to Washington - that announced the discovery of gold in 1848. He resigned from the army and went into banking for awhile. Then, he became the superintendent of the Louisiana State Seminary and Military Institute (later to become Louisiana State University), a post he held when the Civil War broke out. One of the things that recurs in his memoirs are the various meetings and correspondence he held during the war with people he formerly knew as friends at West Point and during his years in the south.<br />
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Admittedly, I am basing my view of the historical Sherman on what is the one-sided version of events he offers in his own memoirs. Still, I came away with a deep admiration of the man. From the beginning, he was reviled as "insane" when he offered his opinion on the number of troops it would require to hold the central theater of the war in Kentucky and Tennessee. He was basically a nobody - not expected to do well - but ended up, alongside Grant, as the savior of the Union - its most brilliant battlefield general. He was fiery and unforgiving, never shy about letting people have it when they questioned his prosecution of the war or his motives.<br />
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You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. ... But you cannot have peace and a division of our country.</blockquote>
There is something wonderfully bracing in Sherman's vision of war, even as he acknowledges its inhumanity. To him, war was not grand, glorious, or heroic. It was cruelty and it was destruction, and he never pretended otherwise. You always see him taking the long view and weighing the logic of trying to fight a war of half-measures against an implacable enemy that would take "mercy" as weakness, and waging total war that would be the speediest and surest way to end it, possibly saving countless lives that would be lost in a prolonged struggle. Whatever else one may think of his March to the Sea, the boldness and success with which it was carried out are remarkable. Sherman's genius for the logistics of moving an army across enemy territory for many hundreds of miles with no supply line open behind him is probably unmatched in military history.<br />
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I considered this march as a means to an end, and not as an essential act of war. Still, then, as now, the march to the sea was generally regarded as something extraordinary, something anomalous, something out of the usual order of events; whereas, in fact, I simply moved from Atlanta to Savannah, as one step in the direction of Richmond, a movement that had to be met and defeated, or the war was necessarily at an end. </blockquote>
One thing that is certain, Sherman was a superb writer. His descriptions and his correspondence snap with energy. He imposes order on chaos with words. And sometimes, he is sublime, as in this description of the morning his army departed Atlanta for the long, dangerous trip into the unknown. It approaches poetry.<br />
<blockquote>
We stood upon the very ground whereon was fought the bloody battle of July 22d, and could see the copse of wood where McPherson fell. Behind us lay Atlanta, smouldering and in ruins, the black smoke rising high in air, and hanging like a pall over the ruined city. Away off in the distance, on the McDonough road, was the rear of Howard's column, the gun-barrels glistening in the sun, the white-topped wagons stretching away to the south; and right before us the Fourteenth Corps, marching steadily and rapidly, with a cheery look and swinging pace, that made light of the thousand miles that lay between us and Richmond.</blockquote>
<blockquote>
...Then we turned our horses heads to the east; Atlanta was soon lost behind the screen of trees, and became a thing of the past. Around it clings many a thought of desperate battle, of hope and fear, that now seem like the memory of a dream; and I have never seen the place since.</blockquote>
<br />Selenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16303596216112203977noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13573225.post-61080606313111756242016-10-11T23:58:00.001-04:002016-10-12T22:36:28.145-04:00Escape!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51LOkNY39GL._SX299_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51LOkNY39GL._SX299_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" width="193" /></a></div>
Well, if Americans have anything in common right now, it might be a sudden desire to escape -- the election, the country, the planet. You might pull one of those off, but only temporarily. I spent a wonderful 10 days in London, but of course, books are often the most reliable escape hatch (not to mention, more affordable), always within arm's reach.<br />
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You can't get much further away than falling into one of China Miéville's worlds. The really good writers transcend their genres. Miéville's fantasies are densely detailed and wildly imagined places, fully-realized with their own culture, politics, history, and beings.<br />
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In the sprawling city of New Crobuzon humans, humanoids, cactus creatures, flying monsters, demons, dimension-spanning freaky-spider "Weavers," and AI junkyard dogs pursue their individual and intersecting destinies. It is in some ways a very familiar urban landscape, but interspersed with such mind-bendingly alien perspectives and surreal description that you'll be knocked refreshingly off your axis. It combines aspects of steampunk, action-adventure, the occult, horror, picaresque, and tragedy. As with all his novels that I've read, <i>Perdido Street Station</i> is highly-recommended.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixnftiutYY-gYIkAwRSEvGUv6jjnKLvqlWl75Aq9TPDFe7YSqz8_kndNpbPxPcLT4r8Ig9WCSqKCq7z-yKh9an-Fo2C5sEK4m_v7WsWRVvvPCa9gimZvlWkMFScodhVJdux9PYzw/s1600/GOTR_Chabon.jpe" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixnftiutYY-gYIkAwRSEvGUv6jjnKLvqlWl75Aq9TPDFe7YSqz8_kndNpbPxPcLT4r8Ig9WCSqKCq7z-yKh9an-Fo2C5sEK4m_v7WsWRVvvPCa9gimZvlWkMFScodhVJdux9PYzw/s200/GOTR_Chabon.jpe" width="121" /></a>Next, I returned to another of my favorite authors, Michael Chabon, and his delightful historical novel, <i>Gentlemen of the Road</i> (or "Jews with swords," as he likes to call it). This swashbuckling adventure is set in the Caucasus mountains in the days when warring khans ruled (around 950 AD). Two unlikely Jewish bandits have partnered up, finding themselves embroiled in a fight to restore a young prince to his rightful throne, which has been usurped by a treacherous villain who wiped out his entire family. It is action-packed and sparkles with Chabon's signature wit and memorable characters.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2s7oB5R2220Oge-PUX_QkGWYnjiPob-gkyPBk29eNAy3WJOzAwzmJ2pTF8ti6MKcd1brOTiTMUnLJVg7ONMpHKZ6Xw5IDgbgNDoVJ1hOD4U1oXE33Vuei0ScTkylig0l1ju2BoQ/s1600/Titus-Andronicus-Poster-LG-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2s7oB5R2220Oge-PUX_QkGWYnjiPob-gkyPBk29eNAy3WJOzAwzmJ2pTF8ti6MKcd1brOTiTMUnLJVg7ONMpHKZ6Xw5IDgbgNDoVJ1hOD4U1oXE33Vuei0ScTkylig0l1ju2BoQ/s200/Titus-Andronicus-Poster-LG-1.jpg" width="154" /></a>My all-around literary balm for whatever is ailing me is Shakespeare. I got to see <i>A Comedy of Errors</i> in the place it premiered in 1594 (!) while in London -- the Hall of Gray's Inn. It was farcical and bubbly, given a screwball-comedy vibe by the musically-inclined cast of the <a href="http://www.anticdisposition.co.uk/the-comedy-of-errors.html" target="_blank">Antic Disposition Company</a>. At home, I'll be <a href="https://actorstheatre.org/shows/macbeth-2016-2017/" target="_blank">seeing <i>Macbeth</i></a> and <i><a href="http://www.kyshakespeare.com/titus/" target="_blank">Titus Andronicus</a></i> this month, and meanwhile, I just started James Shapiro's <i>The Year of Lear</i>, which is fantastic so far. I'm learning so much about the writing of Lear. Very cool.<br />
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I hope you find your own great escapes. Try to get as far away as possible.Selenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16303596216112203977noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13573225.post-76537300541240510102016-07-09T23:58:00.000-04:002016-07-09T23:58:05.989-04:00Felix Holt: The Radical<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7zSrs0LszHYaJZp7Mwt1odO2xPTWJmnsfEotQtE0A_jSGqGZ_TUCld-66BEzkqeBqnxzpeOn9Ev0plfdakQDX97mnrVLR3aJ-cEvCUUvzJYDuF86sKYyHG8pzbgBLg7XVsn1lMg/s1600/Parliament_at_Sunset.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7zSrs0LszHYaJZp7Mwt1odO2xPTWJmnsfEotQtE0A_jSGqGZ_TUCld-66BEzkqeBqnxzpeOn9Ev0plfdakQDX97mnrVLR3aJ-cEvCUUvzJYDuF86sKYyHG8pzbgBLg7XVsn1lMg/s400/Parliament_at_Sunset.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">By Mайкл Гиммельфарб (Mike Gimelfarb) (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons</span></td></tr>
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Granted<i> Felix Holt</i> is not considered to be one of George Eliot's best novels. It has an extraordinarily convoluted plot, turning on the most arcane of laws of inheritance and entail on the one hand, some rather startling coincidences on the other hand, and prickly protagonists with whom it is hard to quite fall in love. Still it is the last major novel of Eliot's that I had not read, so I was looking forward to diving in.<br />
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Eliot never met a difficult subject that she didn't face head on -- child murder, alcoholism, domestic abuse, the status of Jews in England, suicide, and in this case, political reform and riots. Don't ever think you're "escaping" the modern world by delving into Eliot's Victorian novels.<br />
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<i>Felix Holt</i> is set in England after the Reform Bill of 1832 expanded the franchise to more voters. The radical of the title is an idealistic man who believes in workers' rights and education as the path to creating a more equitable society. He eschews anything that smacks of aristocratic or even middle-class pretensions. His refusal to wear the cravat of the "gentleman," even though he is educated and possesses the qualities that could help him rise in station, is a symbol of his dedication to bettering the world, not just leaping at the opportunities that could selfishly propel him to a comfortable life. He meets the beautiful and extremely status-conscious Esther Lyon, the daughter of a dissenting preacher, who desperately wants to escape the barrenness of her provincial life. Their relationship is very much a foreshadowing of Gwendolyn Harleth and Daniel Deronda in Eliot's final novel (<i>Daniel Deronda</i>). Felix's idealism and unselfishness has the uncomfortable effect on Esther of making her aware of her own pettiness and snobbery, chipping away at her supposed superiority.<br />
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The plot unwinds in rural England, where politics in the parliamentary election following the Reform Bill take a nasty turn. Electioneering tactics involve inciting a mob mentality to intimidate voters by "buying" their favor with free drinks at the local pub. The candidates are shady or glibly opportunistic -- even the so-called Tory-turned-Radical, Harold Transome, who arrives with his newfound wealth from the east. Remind you of anything?<br />
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Here is part of a speech by Felix, who is trying to talk sense to people during the election about all the promises being made:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
How can political freedom make us better, any more than religion we don't believe in, if people laugh and wink when they see men abuse and defile it? And while public opinion is what is is -- while men have no better beliefs abut public duty -- while corruption is not felt to be a damning disgrace -- while men are not ashamed in parliament and out of it to make public questions which concern the welfare of millions, a mere screen for their own petty private ends -- I say, no fresh scheme of voting will much mend out condition. [Felix Holt: The Radical, Chapter XXX]</blockquote>
And this from the same chapter:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
But there are two sorts of power. There's a power to do mischief -- to undo what has been done with great expense and labour, to waste and destroy, to be cruel to the weak, to lie and quarrel, and to talk poisonous nonsense....Ignorant power comes in the end to do the same thing as wicked power, it makes misery.</blockquote>
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Selenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16303596216112203977noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13573225.post-16189674220908233592016-05-31T23:17:00.000-04:002016-05-31T23:17:07.797-04:00Summer Reading Picks - Westerns<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-mYL860rsSmfFu3ECxWD-CJvUslGSNLD8kqzkRk4HpgsOj6RfKiDtmlwnTq3spKlBmS2gnBydbhyphenhyphengQjMDx16TOdKwCc0MrLA3YijuzYEyeq94-EtRsbc455R3ntHd3c5JiqfNYg/s1600/buffalo_landscape.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="242" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-mYL860rsSmfFu3ECxWD-CJvUslGSNLD8kqzkRk4HpgsOj6RfKiDtmlwnTq3spKlBmS2gnBydbhyphenhyphengQjMDx16TOdKwCc0MrLA3YijuzYEyeq94-EtRsbc455R3ntHd3c5JiqfNYg/s320/buffalo_landscape.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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I just finished my first summer reading, Ivan Doig's memoir, <i>This House of Sky</i>, which was nominated for the National Book Award in 1979. Doig grew up in small-town Montana with his widowed father in the 40s and 50s, bouncing around from ranch to ranch in the areas around White Sulphur Springs and Dupuyer. </div>
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Beautifully written, it vividly describes the lives of hardworking sheepherders, cowboys, and ranchers who battled a hard land, but mostly it chronicles the life of his father and intrepid grandmother, who held together family life after the death of his young mother. Doig gently picks apart the threads of his earliest memories and pieces them together with stories he heard from his family, to recreate a moving portrait of a time and a landscape that he left for a different kind of life.<br />
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I've read one other Doig book, <i>The Whistling Season</i>, a novel that evokes some of the same gentle nostalgia as his memoir. I've been thinking of my own fascination with the history of the West and the books that have informed and inspired it. These aren't "genre" Westerns (although I've read some Louis L'amour and Zane Grey along the way). If you're looking for summer reading with a Western flavor, here are some of my favorites in no particular order.<br />
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<ul>
<li><i>Lonesome Dove</i> by Larry McMutry - It actually took me awhile to get to this one, but it seems too obvious to leave off. My husband would say these cowboys talked way too much about their "feelings" (based only on the TV interpretation), but it's a classic for a reason. An epic tale of the west with a cattle drive from Texas to Montana, the tangled lives of cowboys and the women they love, a man in search of his runaway wife, and a prostitute with a heart of gold.</li>
<li><i><a href="https://www.amazon.ca/Englishmans-Boy-Guy-Vanderhaeghe-ebook/dp/B005GHF2VE/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1464747044&sr=1-4" target="_blank">The Englishman's Boy</a></i> and <i><a href="https://www.amazon.ca/Last-Crossing-Guy-Vanderhaeghe/dp/0771087381/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1464747044&sr=1-2" target="_blank">The Last Crossing</a></i> by Guy Vanderhaeghe - This Canadian writer probably flies way too far under the radar. These stellar novels are part of a loose trilogy set mostly along the Montana and Canadian border. The first one follows a boy's dark adventures among wolf hunters and horse thieves in 1870s Montana, and stretches to 1920s Hollywood where a screenwriter has tracked down the old man to tell his story for a film. The second is a post-Civil War tale of two English brothers who travel to Montana to search for their youngest brother, who has disappeared into the wilderness. They are part of a motley crew traveling on various missions of their own, including a woman who is trying to avenge her sister by tracking down the suspected murderer. Vanderhaeghe died in 2012 but not before finishing the third in this set, <i>A Good Man</i>, which I hope to read soon.</li>
<li><i>Little Big Man</i> by Thomas Berger - This novel was the basis for the Dustin Hoffman movie, but you should read the book. It's as funny a story as can be that begins with a young boy's family being massacred by Indians. Endlessly entertaining, Jack/Little Big Man's adventures among Indians, the U.S. Calvary, gunfighters, and outlaws is irreverent and epic in scope. He claims to be the only white survivor of Little Bighorn.</li>
<li><i>The Son</i> by Philipp Meyer - Another novel that begins with a white boy's family being massacred and himself taken into captivity by the Comanche. It couldn't be more different. Viscerally detailed, it chronicles the history of a Texas family from the 1800s through 2012. I wrote a <a href="http://thebrownstudy.blogspot.com/2013/09/manifest-destiny-philipp-meyer-and-way.html" target="_blank">lengthier review here</a> of this brilliant novel.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.amazon.ca/Border-Trilogy-Pretty-Horses-Crossing/dp/0375407936/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1464748796&sr=1-1&keywords=border+trilogy" target="_blank">The Border Trilogy</a>, <i>Blood Meridian</i> by Cormac McCarthy - I wandered into McCarthy when I read the first of the trilogy, <i>All The Pretty Horses</i>. Since then I've read nearly all of McCarthy's work from his early dark and twisty Appalachian novels to his Western masterpieces, including the gorgeous, mythic, and hair-raising <i>Blood Meridian, </i>which I'm contemplating reading again this summer. Because it's awesome.</li>
<li><i>Death Comes for the Archbishop</i> by Willa Cather - Cather is another of those writers I've read extensively. She's masterful in writing about the lives of prairie people, particularly women, but this historical novel is set in the desert southwest, mostly New Mexico. It tells the story of the Catholic priests who started the Spanish missions among the native Americans. It's cast of characters includes Kit Carson and many other rascals and cheats.</li>
<li><i>Fourth of July Creek</i> by Smith Henderson - I <a href="http://thebrownstudy.blogspot.com/2015/02/fourth-of-july-creek.html" target="_blank">loved this novel of 1980s Montana</a> -- a gripping story about a very flawed, but also admirable man, who tries to save people as a social worker, but can't control his own broken personal life, his runaway daughter, or a young kid on the lam with his fugitive father.</li>
<li><i>White Crosses</i> by Larry Watson - Yet another story set in Montana on the border near Alberta. A contemporary tale of scandal in a small town, featuring a mystery, a protagonist with dubious motivations, and a wonderfully complex and textured writing style. </li>
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Selenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16303596216112203977noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13573225.post-41884926166406551602016-04-12T22:49:00.000-04:002016-04-12T22:49:02.971-04:00Great Books I Hate: Wuthering Heights<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilQhS37AvYU2_7tjPFBWMMcSXcSccmVduB3I3ZrvyuX_fL_25uZwhwydFgqyodjKEBbEJukax4QNznBwc1goviLT5RzYevpk2cgw44zzSwu1S1VYpWaT2j9ItmOGz7gimBaFVQKQ/s1600/Emilybronte_retouche.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilQhS37AvYU2_7tjPFBWMMcSXcSccmVduB3I3ZrvyuX_fL_25uZwhwydFgqyodjKEBbEJukax4QNznBwc1goviLT5RzYevpk2cgw44zzSwu1S1VYpWaT2j9ItmOGz7gimBaFVQKQ/s320/Emilybronte_retouche.jpg" width="217" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Emily Bronte (Wikimedia Commons)</td></tr>
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I was pretty sure I read this novel a long time ago. I even remembered disliking it, which means I must have read it, right? And much like <i>The Great Gatsby</i> (another great book I hate), I thought I should revisit it as a mature adult, and not as a harried college student or doltish middle-schooler. After all, I have a graduate degree in English Lit, a love of 19th century British novels, and Charlotte and Anne Bronte are both among my favorites, so <i>Wuthering Heights</i> would seem to be squarely in my wheelhouse. The first thing that struck me was that I remembered nothing about the narrative structure and the various characters relating the story (dopey Lockwood, annoying Nelly, that sap Isabella). If I never read it, why did I have such a visceral sense of having disliked it? Puzzled, I kept plugging away, and gradually came to believe that I must have blocked it out as one does a childhood trauma. Good lord, I hate this novel.<br />
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Emily Bronte was a great poet, a visionary, a square peg in a round hole, no doubt, and for her personally, I have a great deal of admiration. I can only speculate that she died partly from the effort of repressing the consuming rage that would have burned Haworth to the ground, but for her writing <i>Wuthering Heights.</i><br />
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This novel is full of really awful people -- in particular, the romantic duo of Heathcliff and Catherine. Heathcliff makes Lord Byron look like Mr. Rogers. Case in point: Byron loved his dogs so much he wanted to be buried beside his Newfoundland. Heathcliff. Hung. A. Puppy.<i> (</i>Did they leave that part out in the Olivier movie version?) Emily was also a great lover of animals, so I'm guessing she had a point to make about Heathcliff's brutishness. But why are there readers who think he's romantic? (Fellas, if you ever meet a woman who claims to love Heathcliff, <i>run</i>.) He's no Byronic hero. He's not even funny. Actual Byron was a hoot. (“I should, many a good day, have blown my brains out, but for the recollection that it would have given pleasure to my mother-in-law.”)<span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 18.2px;"> </span>Shakespeare gave his villains all the best lines, but Bronte's Heathcliff is a cursing crashing boor/bore when he isn't mawkishly blubbering nonsense about Cathy.<br />
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There's also nothing sympathetic about Heathcliff. He was lucky enough, as a poor orphan, to be plucked out of the gutter by a generous benefactor. But of course, the other kids were mean to him. If that's the worst thing that happens to a dude in the 1800s, you'll never make it in a Dickens novel. Hell, Emily had it harder than that. (She was a bad-ass. Her sister Charlotte said she once cauterized her own wound from a dog-bite with a hot fire iron.) And his tormented love for Cathy? Oh, boo-hoo. This is what T.S. Eliot would call the absence of an "objective correlative." None of Heathcliff's "sufferings" are enough to account for his overwhelming nastiness. The object of his affection is just as wince-inducing as he is. It's as if Bronte set out to create a Rogue's Gallery of hateful characters.<br />
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What was Emily up to here? Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar suggest that it is a novel not so much about people as "forces or beings," and that Catherine/Heathcliff are just two halves of one consciousness. Heathcliff is the imaginative "whip" of the powerless female -- a sort of wish fulfillment of the lady who has to sit by the fireside while her other half can go running out on the moors and knock heads together. I imagine a lot of genteel women in the 19th century would have liked to do that, so if you look at <i>Heights</i> not as a novel, but a psychological portrait of frustrated and oppressed womanhood, it at least makes more sense. But it certainly doesn't make it lovable.Selenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16303596216112203977noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13573225.post-36130905916723049882016-02-22T22:54:00.000-05:002016-02-22T22:54:36.088-05:00Winter Reading: Fervor, fairies, and women who run with wolves<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Time flies when you're reading good books, so I really have to schedule some no-fails for the winter. When you're lolling in the sun with a margarita, lesser works will suffice, but cold, dreary days call for something so engaging you forget the ice melt drips crystallizing on the floor and the the itchy layers of swaddling required to ward off icy fingers and toes.<br />
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Russian novels always seem like a good fit for the cold season. I read Tolstoy's <i>Hadji Murad, </i>which is about as long as some chapters in <i>War and Peace</i> -- bite-size Tolstoy for those with commitment issues. This slim novel tells the story of a historical Avar guerilla fighter who both fought against and with the Russians in their campaigns to quell the hostile people of the Caucasus in the 19th Century. Tolstoy was inspired by his experience serving in the Russian army at the time. It pits Christian Russia against the Muslim tribes in what is now Dagestan and Chechnya. Tolstoy's admiration for the struggle of Murad as a man of faith (even though not his own) comes through.<br />
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Another exploration of faith, Marilynne Robinson's moving and beautiful <i>Lila</i> rounds out her trilogy of novels centered around the quiet, and often troubled lives of two pastors in the small town of Gilead. These are books that take seriously the questions of Christian doctrine, and how it plays out in the lives of two families. They are anything but dry. Robinson's characters contend with faith and doubt, alienation and communion, family ties that bind, but that can't always hold together. Grave, honest, and lovely, Robinson's writing feels like a priestly blessing. She is one of my favorite writers and thinkers. In <i>Gilead</i>, the aging pastor John Ames narrates his life story for the young son that he knows he will not see into adulthood. <i>Lila</i> is the story of his young wife and how their unlikely marriage came to be.<br />
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In retrospect, it's as if I read by theme, but it was actually totally random. Sir Walter Scott's<i> Old Mortality</i> is a historical fiction set in the late 1600s in Scotland during the Presbyterian uprising of the conservative Covenanters (some these days might say, right-wing extremists), who fought the Royalists over the right to re-install their particular brand of religion without any interference from the Crown. The hero is Henry Morton, by birth and nurture a more moderate Covenanter, who is torn between his loyalties to his own people and his love for the lady Edith, the daughter of a leading Royalist supporter. It's an adventure novel wrapped up is some very Scottian narrative fustiness, but the accounts of narrow escapes and battles are very good.<br />
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Next, I finally got around to Susannah Clarke's <i>Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell</i>, already a BBC-produced series, about pre-eminent English magicians working their arts during the Napoleonic wars. An alternate history that brings magic and fairies into the realm of politics and military enterprise, I thought it was great fun. It's quirky in its attention to historical detail while at the same time, completely fantastical, rewriting the battles of the Peninsular Wars and Waterloo by giving Wellington his own magician <i>aide de camp</i> and setting up a showdown between humans, magicians, and fairies in Yorkshire<i>.</i> Sly, funny and smart.<br />
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Finally, I actually read a new book -- a novel by Sarah Hall called <i>The Wolf Border</i>, about a biologist whose expertise on wolves attracts the attention of a rich aristocrat in Cumbria. The protagonist, Rachel Caine leaves her work on an Idaho Reservation to head up an eccentric project in her native England. Her skepticism is overcome by a personal crisis that drives her to take on the job of returning wolves to the wild on an English estate. I don't want to reveal too much about the plot, but I loved the setting in the Lake District, the complicated family dynamics, and the conservation aspect of the story. Hall's writing is sharp and engaging. She works the themes of nature and nurture, the instincts of human and animal, the fragile border between wilderness and civilization.Selenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16303596216112203977noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13573225.post-87286803636644013802015-11-22T22:26:00.001-05:002015-12-30T23:22:07.231-05:00The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth<br />
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Paul Kingsnorth's novel <i>The Wake</i> is a work that takes seriously the importance of presenting a historical fiction in its world as accurately as possible. The opening is 1066, the year that William the Conqueror defeated the English King Harold at Hastings. To reflect the voice of his narrator, Kingsnorth created a "shadow" tongue -- a somewhat modernized version of Old English, using only words of Anglo-Saxon origin throughout. In the quote above, you can see the adherence to original spellings and there is little punctuation. At first glance, it is very foreign, but it takes surprisingly little time to familiarize yourself with the language and to fall into the rhythm of its cadence. If you've ever read Beowulf, it has the lyrical quality of the great epic.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJ_Sw8zojzPgxyknX2U1_068Jxz5o0QO__Uc7KLyUXS1-gezbKoJRmoI2Br7yHKSTR6oTX7wqHh0dmQ11e4vj2YsoVWCE3v9yRiW6H8eozylH6SPoVRDdnj9LYuCst4KXRb7uf2g/s1600/1066_FelixClay.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJ_Sw8zojzPgxyknX2U1_068Jxz5o0QO__Uc7KLyUXS1-gezbKoJRmoI2Br7yHKSTR6oTX7wqHh0dmQ11e4vj2YsoVWCE3v9yRiW6H8eozylH6SPoVRDdnj9LYuCst4KXRb7uf2g/s320/1066_FelixClay.jpg" title="" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/ng-interactive/2015/oct/13/1066-and-all-that-battle-of-hastings-re-enacted" target="_blank">1066 re-enactment</a> by Guardian photojournalist Felix Clay</td></tr>
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Aside from the brilliance of its linguistic choices, Kingsnorth creates a memorable character in Buccmaster of Holland (an area of eastern England known for its watery fenns), a man of status and wealth before the cataclysmic Norman invasion. Buccmaster loses everything, his wife, sons, house and land, and is forced to take to the forest as an outlaw. An adherent of the old ways and the gods who reigned before Christianity came to Britain, Buccmaster is determined to drive the French out and take his revenge by killing every Frenchman he comes across. He becomes a "grene" man, hiding in the shadows of the forest, gathering his men, and stalking the Norman foe. He is led by the elusive and mythical Weland, whose mocking voice comes to him, guiding his actions, sometimes in dreams, sometimes in visions. Buccmaster feels himself "chosen" by the old gods to fight for England. His animosity for priests and the new Christ is almost equal to his hatred of his Norman overlords.<br />
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<i>the bastard he cum north from the place where he had cwelled harald cyng and all the way he cum in blud his men they fucced all anglisc wifmen they cum to and cwelled them when done and all hams and tuns they beorned in ingenga fyr. the bastard cum up to lundun fuccan and cwellan and beornan and the witan it seen what was cuman and it stepped baec and the last of angland that daeg was gan and we had a new cyng who spac not efen our tunge and ate not our foda and cursed us as hunds and curses us still</i></blockquote>
I don't want to give too much away about the novel or its narrator. It is profoundly disturbing in a way that historical novels often are not. Usually, we feel the comfortable distance between the past and present as something already finished -- antique, quaint, a lost world, decorated in the trappings of legend. And you would think that Kingsnorth's decision to create a foreign-looking language would serve only to heighten the sense that this historical moment is long past relevancy. Instead, it does the opposite. No matter how archaic the language, the circumstances of Buccmaster's dislocation and suffering, the violence described, the culpability of those bought by French gold, the betrayals, shock, and upheaval of Buccmaster's world are immediate and all too recognizable. It reminds me a lot of Cormac McCarthy's <i>Blood Meridian</i>, if that gives you an idea of its effect.<br />
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I highly recommend this novel for those who are interested in historical fiction, Anglo-Saxon England, or the unreliable narrator. The pleasure of the language is reason enough to read it, but the story itself is deeply engaging, not to mention, a bit terrifying.<br />
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<br />Selenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16303596216112203977noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13573225.post-15882892166529448932015-09-22T15:12:00.000-04:002015-09-22T15:14:03.530-04:00Grant's Memoirs<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I spent a good part of the summer reading the memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant. He's one of those historical figures who has become almost a caricature -- the hard-drinking, cigar-chomping general who, as the 18th President, led an administration criticized for corruption and bumbling policy.<br />
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Grant was rarely out-maneuvered on the battlefield, but he was often nearly undone by gossip and political wrangling, so it's not hard to imagine that his presidency would be undermined by the same kind of elements. But that's just my speculation, so I'm planning to follow up the memoirs with some more objective historical views on his life and presidency.<br />
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Grant's intelligence and thoughtfulness define his writing. He was candid, deliberate, fair-minded, and had a knack for incorporating dry humor. My take on him from reading the memoirs is of a thoroughly decent man who held others to his own standards...and was often disappointed. He had no use for pretense, didn't try to duck responsibility or criticism, and didn't waste much time defending himself from the negative press or the petty gossip of his peers. I admired his competence, his doggedness in the face of adversity, and his deep patriotism. There's nothing dry about the writing, even though he gets pretty deep into the weeds of strategy and maneuvers. It seemed to me that he was always weighing the consequences of failure in the face of the overwhelming brutality of the war, and that's how he was able to continue to absorb its blows.<br />
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Later in the war, when the battlefield losses in the Wilderness campaign were staggering, beyond even what had come before, Grant was criticized for being no better than a butcher. But in his view, enduring the monumental loss of life was the only way to end the war. Prolonging it without completely crushing the south was not an option -- there could be no negotiated peace, and there could be no compromise on the issue of slavery. At the beginning of Volume 2, after Vicksburg had fallen to Union forces and Gettysburg had been decided in the North, Grant interrupted his narrative on the military progress of the war to give his opinion on why the South must be defeated -- for its own good.<br />
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There was no time during the rebellion when I did not think, and often say, that the South was more to be benefited by its defeat than the North. The latter had the people, the institutions, and the territory to make a great and prosperous nation. The former was burdened with an institution abhorrent to all civilized people not brought up under it, and one which degraded labor, kept it in ignorance, and enervated the governing class. </blockquote>
He goes on to describe the bleak and ruinous future that he believed awaited the South if it had succeeded in making itself a nation, separate from the Union, and concluded, "The war was expensive to the South as well as to the North, both in blood and treasure, but it was worth all it cost."<br />
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Of course, I was reading Grant just as the Confederate flag controversy was rearing its ugly head again in the news, which made me realize how much the Civil War still haunts us, how it is not so far removed in time, and how little some people have heeded its lessons.<br />
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<br />Selenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16303596216112203977noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13573225.post-7604679821196620362015-05-25T22:41:00.001-04:002015-05-25T22:41:20.248-04:00The Art of Recommending Books<br />
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One of my favorite things about working in bookstores was being able to recommend books to people who didn't quite know what they were looking for. They had an idea of a book, they knew what they had liked, but they didn't have anything particular in mind. It was an opportunity to hand-sell books that I loved -- under the radar, backlist, or a forgotten classic -- in any case, a departure off the NYT Bestseller list for those who didn't want the same trendy book that everyone else was reading.<br />
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Of course, you have to be careful. Not everyone is going to appreciate the necrophiliac protagonist of an early Cormac McCarthy novel. If you were to even start telling someone about the plot of <i>Child of God</i>, they might start edging away down the self-help aisle and wondering if they should alert the authorities. I've had someone tell me that they tried to read Hilary Mantel's <i>Wolf Hall</i> and wanted to throw it across the room, which makes me wish I had a copy to hurl back at their head, but... then I have to admit that it's really NOT for everyone's taste and it doesn't make them a bad person (necessarily).<br />
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So I try to think of things that readers would like based on what snippets of interest they've told me about, when and where they're planning to read it, and my gauge of their attention span. I know from my own idiosyncratic moods that some books have to wait for the right moment. I read <i>Moby Dick</i> the first time one summer while in grad school out of some kind of self-imposed, English major compulsion, liking some parts and finding much of it completely tiresome. The second time around, when I had a little more context and read it because I was interested in Melville and that whole era of writers, I LOVED it. I'm enamored with it. I'd happily read it a third time, and all the difference is <i>when</i> I was finally ready for it.<br />
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And some things are never going to click. One of the first serious recommendations I ever received from an adult who saw me as a budding writer was <i>The Great Gatsby</i>, which is totally understandable. It is a virtually undisputed American classic. You want to get some starry-eyed kid off on the right track in American literature, you go for Gatsby. So I dutifully read it as an eighth-grader, and of course, I didn't like it. What could a little Appalachian bumpkin possibly understand about all these whiny, affected rich people, drinking gin and dressing up in tuxedos for no apparent reason? Which is why I re-read it not too long ago -- because for crying out loud, it's F. Scott Fitzgerald. Yeah, I still hate it. I hate all those characters, especially the narrator, and even if you put Leo DiCaprio in the movie version, I still hate it. Is hate too strong a word? It's not to my taste.<br />
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And so fellow-readers, with that in mind, here are some entirely random recommendations for your summer reading. You might like them. You might want to employ them as a projectile. Who knows?<br />
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<b>The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt</b>. My favorite of her three novels so far (and I've liked them all), it is an epic, touching, adventurous, heartbreaking, thoroughly engrossing novel about love, friendship, and art. Tartt is intellectually imposing while still being approachable and funny. If you want to throw this book, there's no hope for you, despite everything I just said.<br />
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<b>The Forest Unseen: A Year's Watch in Nature by David George Haskell</b>. For those of a naturalist's bent, a gorgeous book about plants and critters the author observes over a year in a wooded spot about the size of a mandala. Also <b>Scott Weidensaul's Mountains of the Heart: A Natural History of the Appalachians</b>. I love his writing and, growing up in these mountains myself, I learned a lot about the special geography of the place.<br />
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<b>The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins</b>. Here's something that almost never happens -- I'm recommending a novel that absolutely everyone else seems to be reading -- a bestseller, a mystery, someone probably already has the movie rights. Clever and well-written page-turner, this is Ur-summer reading material. I read it because my mother made me read it, and I ALWAYS listen to her. Yes.<br />
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<b>Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America by Garry Wills</b>. A really smart, engaging, concise, power-house of a book that elucidates what makes this short speech so revolutionary in American history. My husband made me read it, and I ALWAYS listen to him, too.<br />
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<b>Incarnadine: Poems by Mary Szybist</b>. I don't read nearly enough poetry these days, but this is one contemporary collection I did catch. Beautiful and mysterious encounters between the everyday and the otherworldly -- reimaginings and recastings of the Annunciation. Also <b>Elizabeth Bishop, The Complete Poems, 1927-1979</b>. She's one of my favorite poets, and there's a new book by Colm Toibin on Elizabeth Bishop that I have on my own list.<br />
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A few others that I've written about in more detail already: Smith Henderson's <i>Fourth of July Creek</i>; A.S. Byatt, <i>The Children's Book</i>; <i>Hild</i> by Nicola Griffith, anything by Michael Chabon.<br />
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<br />Selenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16303596216112203977noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13573225.post-21127997020820558262015-04-06T23:35:00.000-04:002015-04-06T23:38:29.805-04:00Spring reading <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I finished up my project to read all of Shakespeare by his birthday this month. I ended with <i>Pericles</i>, even though I realized right after I started it that I had read it in graduate school. Obviously, I didn't remember it very well. It's one of the "disputed" authorship plays -- probably taken over by Shakespeare at some point (it was not included in the First Folio). I think we read it in school primarily to illustrate the difference between the rather mediocre writer of the first part and the more assured second half, presumably when Will took over. There are clear echoes of <i>The Tempest</i>, and of <i>Winter's Tale</i> for the sheer implausibility of the plot. Another of the last ones on my list was <i>The Merry Wives of Windsor</i>, featuring the reappearance of the ever-popular Falstaff from the Henry IV plays. As a main character and butt of all the jokes, Falstaff is just kind of sad and pathetic, and none of the other characters really stand out in this farce. But there you go, they can't all be gems. Sometimes, a hard-working showbiz guy just has to churn out <i>Fast and Furious XXIV</i>.<br />
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What I learned from reading through Shakespeare was how entertaining the history plays are. I had never read <i>King John</i>, <i>Henry VIII</i>, or any of the <i>Henry VI</i> trilogy. The history plays feature great characters, beautiful speeches, and ruthless action. They are fascinating for their spin on history, particularly how H6 portrays the Wars of the Roses. It inspired me to read an <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Wars-Roses-Plantagenets-Tudors-ebook/dp/B00INIXM42" target="_blank">excellent history</a> of the time period by Dan Jones. The tangled politics, betrayals, and side-switching still make your head spin, but it will shed a little light on this brutal slice of England's history. It was also timely, as they just <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/archaeology/11474297/Richard-III-reburial-Everything-you-need-to-know-about-Leicester-Cathedral-service.html" target="_blank">reburied Richard III</a> after recently digging up his bones in a church parking lot. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Illiers-Combray" by Oxxo - Own work. <br />
Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons</td></tr>
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While I was feeling all sassy from that literary milestone, I went ahead and jumped into another one, finally tackling the first leg of Marcel Proust's multi-volume <i>À la recherche du temps perdu</i>. Volume 1 includes the parts, <i>Combray</i> and <i>Swann in Love</i>. (I read the updated translation of C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin by D. J. Enright.)<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Combray</i> is Proust's fictionalized memoir of his childhood, and if you've ever spent any time thinking about your own fragmented memories, particularly wondering why some small incidents or details stand out over all the rest, you'll be interested to see how Proust explores this phenomenon.<br />
<br />
I've often puzzled over the weird little moments that have imprinted themselves on my mind -- and how the vast majority of moments over all those years have just disappeared into the fog of memory. Smells, tastes, feelings, visual impressions scatter like the downy seed of a dandelion head. Proust re-creates a world, literally in search of a lost time, built on nuances, putting into words things that we don't usually even try to capture because they are so elusive or so befuddling. For him, they include the delicate taste of madeleines dipped in tea, flowering hawthorns in spring, his mother's goodnight kiss, the limbo-land between sleeping and waking when you don't remember where you are or even who you are. Sentences unwind across pages and don't so much describe, as paint an impressionistic landscape of accruing details. If I were to try to do the same thing, I would be reconstructing a life from the smell of the riverbank, climbing a fence in my nightgown on a moonlit summer night, my grandpa's old black rotary phone, the terrible excitement of being small in a ferocious wind that felt like it could pick me up and carry me over the fields. These are the strange things that Proust will lay before you, whether or not your life resembles that of a turn-of-the-century Frenchman.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
But for me it was enough if, in my own bed, my sleep was so heavy as completely to relax my consciousness; for then I lost all sense of the place in which I had gone to sleep, and when I awoke at midnight, not knowing where I was, I could not be sure at first who I was; I had only the most rudimentary sense of existence, such as may lurk and flicker in the depths of an animal's consciousness; I was more destitute of human qualities than the cave-dweller; but then the memory, not yet of the place in which I was, but of various other places where I had lived, and might now very possibly be, would come like a rope let down from heaven to draw me up out of the abyss of not-being, from which I could never have escaped by myself: in a flash I would traverse and surmount centuries of civilisation, and out of a half-visualised succession of oil-lamps, followed by shirts with turned-down collars, would put together by degrees the component parts of my ego. <span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>[Combray, </i><b>Project Gutenberg</b><i>]</i> </span></blockquote>
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Selenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16303596216112203977noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13573225.post-72737633772895290722015-02-08T21:40:00.000-05:002015-02-08T21:42:12.269-05:00CSI: Shakespeare<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZUnrKfT_46bp2PY2sIeDH13rElLCZIAmeXY1V1lIX9QbcxQYP-eSDLhIntAqNtWv3ohtK9QHI3eyCrDlwI6s48zCxTKD7vtQPAJbfhva_8lptOcI_bwH6oSNA66_UGdBJXVFCkw/s1600/Winter+2010-11river2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZUnrKfT_46bp2PY2sIeDH13rElLCZIAmeXY1V1lIX9QbcxQYP-eSDLhIntAqNtWv3ohtK9QHI3eyCrDlwI6s48zCxTKD7vtQPAJbfhva_8lptOcI_bwH6oSNA66_UGdBJXVFCkw/s1600/Winter+2010-11river2.jpg" height="150" width="200" /></a></div>
I've been embarked on a reading project of Shakespeare since about September, when I decided to read back through all the plays, and catch what I had never read. The history plays have been fascinating. Right now, I'm through Part 1 and still reading Part 2 of <i>King Henry VI</i>. In Part 1, Joan of Arc gets totally trashed. In Part 2, all the gears are in motion for the War of the Roses.<br />
<br />
Henry VI's uncle, the Duke of Gloucester has just been dispatched by the Duke of Suffolk. Rumors are he has been murdered in his bed, but squeamish Henry can't bear to view the body of his uncle and Protector, who has been accused of treason by his enemies. So Henry asks the Earl of Warwick to have a look and report back. Oh, how I wish it was this awesome on CSI:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Warwick</b>:<br />
See how the blood is settled in his face.<br />
Oft have I seen a timely-parted ghost,<br />
Of ashy semblance, meagre, pale and bloodless,<br />
Being all descended to the labouring heart;<br />
Who, in the conflict that it holds with death,<br />
Attracts the same for aidance 'gainst the enemy;<br />
Which with the heart there cools and ne'er returneth<br />
To blush and beautify the cheek again.<br />
But see, his face is black and full of blood,<br />
His eye-balls further out than when he lived,<br />
Staring full ghastly like a strangled man;<br />
His hair uprear'd, his nostrils stretched with struggling;<br />
His hands abroad display'd, as one that grasp'd<br />
And tugg'd for life and was by strength subdued:<br />
Look, on the sheets his hair you see, is sticking;<br />
His well-proportion'd beard made rough and rugged,<br />
Like to the summer's corn by tempest lodged.<br />
It cannot be but he was murder'd here;<br />
The least of all these signs were probable.</blockquote>
Warwick don't need no stinking coroners! It's a slam-dunk:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Who finds the heifer dead and bleeding fresh<br />
And sees fast by a butcher with an axe,<br />
But will suspect 'twas he that made the slaughter?</blockquote>
When Suffolk dares refute this evidence, Warwick shoots back with the timeless "yo mama" insult:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
But that the guilt of murder bucklers thee<br />
And I should rob the deathsman of his fee,<br />
Quitting thee thereby of ten thousand shames,<br />
And that my sovereign's presence makes me mild,<br />
I would, false murderous coward, on thy knee<br />
Make thee beg pardon for thy passed speech,<br />
And say it was thy mother that thou meant'st<br />
That thou thyself was born in bastardy;<br />
And after all this fearful homage done,<br />
Give thee thy hire and send thy soul to hell,<br />
Pernicious blood-sucker of sleeping men!<br />
- <i>King Henry VI, Part Two, Act 3, Scene 2 </i></blockquote>
It really is rather delicious.Selenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16303596216112203977noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13573225.post-52454117326009056662015-02-01T23:53:00.001-05:002015-02-01T23:54:07.268-05:00Fourth of July Creek<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU-qPXIjIIvabStcyIpm4xoF7WB5w8A3FXwBRzYmvmKZmZ3KT4Pba5TxXBQRJYTvhMXXY8noajJbr6BIv2VE5PcvQ0wEyGpc9n55OI6tAfYUmcFJJpzU7KoeLSCGE-F2enTyo2aQ/s1600/FourthJulyCreek.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU-qPXIjIIvabStcyIpm4xoF7WB5w8A3FXwBRzYmvmKZmZ3KT4Pba5TxXBQRJYTvhMXXY8noajJbr6BIv2VE5PcvQ0wEyGpc9n55OI6tAfYUmcFJJpzU7KoeLSCGE-F2enTyo2aQ/s1600/FourthJulyCreek.jpg" height="200" width="131" /></a></div>
I started off the new year right with my first book pick. I had read some pretty glowing reviews of Smith Henderson's debut novel, <i>Fourth of July Creek</i>, when it came out, but had kind of forgotten about it until it finally became available as an eBook from my library. It may be a first novel, but it reads like an instant classic -- a gripping story, great characters, and beautifully descriptive language that is lyrical and immediate.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Medallions from the quaking aspen lay about in a golden hoard, blowing up in parade confetti as he drove through them. A few Indian paintbrushes still glowed red like small tissue-paper fires at a grade-school play. Pete felt a homesick sorrow at the little differences, at time itself....The place looked shorn, fussed over like a toy dog.</blockquote>
The protagonist is Pete Snow, a social worker in northwest Montana, whose family life is almost as screwed up as any of the people he serves. The year is 1980 and the Reagan era is dawning. Pete becomes involved with an anti-government fugitive whose young son he is trying to help while also searching for his own runaway teenage daughter. He is an alcoholic and pretty terrible at dealing with his personal relationships, but at bottom, he is a good guy. Henderson brings Pete to life in all his failures, his noble attempts, his personal disasters, and his doggedness in pursuing a job that is mostly grim and thankless.<br />
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Henderson has an uncanny knack for capturing a character's inner voice, both adults and children, and his dialogue rips right along, natural and succinct. There are moments of humor and quiet beauty among the many dark corners of this novel as it subtly reveals a great truth -- even the most broken people can sometimes do good.<br />
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Finely observed and anchored in a very particular time and place, the novel also has some lovely descriptions of the rugged landscape near the Flathead River and Kalispell. I would place Henderson in the same literary space as Larry Brown and Philip Meyer. It is definitely one of the best first novels I've ever read.Selenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16303596216112203977noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13573225.post-68714598467674287782014-12-31T00:20:00.000-05:002014-12-31T00:20:04.858-05:00The year of the book backlogI realized as I looked back over this year's reading that I hadn't read a single book that actually came out in 2014. I'm so far behind that I haven't yet got to Donna Tartt's <i>The Goldfinch</i>, which I had intended to read as soon as it came out. Ditto for the incomparable Marilynne Robinson's <i>Lila</i>.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwX6SRPB1jWA2mXigzNHTSjUxDSVP5Wk7UplrTrbLjhg9UABijQd4nJ42FWN2fND4Qc8RRIaGr2ACkpTCPk8R8csFSzYB1rn_8pyUprU3jd05mWAsuQYh6KXnzIuXwBJKOj5IDKA/s1600/childrensbook_byatt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; display: inline !important; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwX6SRPB1jWA2mXigzNHTSjUxDSVP5Wk7UplrTrbLjhg9UABijQd4nJ42FWN2fND4Qc8RRIaGr2ACkpTCPk8R8csFSzYB1rn_8pyUprU3jd05mWAsuQYh6KXnzIuXwBJKOj5IDKA/s1600/childrensbook_byatt.jpg" height="200" width="133" /></a>Here is just how dawdling I am: I finally read A.S. Byatt's <i>The Children's Book</i>, which I've had on my shelf since it was published in 2009. What a beautiful, haunting story it was, set during the gloaming of Victorian England through the end of WWI. Epic in scope, it traces a history of the arts in those years -- painters and potters, writers and dramatists -- through a sprawling Bohemian family and their circle of friends. Some of the characters reminded me of the poets Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves, which brought another long-neglected book out of the dust -- Jean Moorcroft Wilson's momentous biography of Sassoon: <i>The Making of a War Poet</i> (volume one is a hefty 600+ pages). I believe Wilson could tell you what Sassoon had for lunch on any given day -- it's that thorough. I bought it hot off the press in ...1999! Ye Gods, I actually gave Wilson enough time to complete and publish the second volume, which came out last May. I hope it won't take me another decade and a half to get to it.<br />
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In retrospect, I pretty much disappeared down the rabbit hole of the WWI era this year. I returned to Graves' stunning <i>The Great War and Modern Memory</i>, which is the book that inspired my master's thesis and introduced me to Sassoon, Graves, and Wilfrid Owen in the first place. I began the year with Somerset Maugham's <i>The Razor's Edge</i>, and finally read Hemingway's <i>The Sun Also Rises</i>, Evelyn Waugh's <i>Decline and Fall</i>, and Lawrence's <i>Lady Chatterly's Lover</i> -- a much better book than I was expecting it to be. I think it's reputation has been distorted by all the sensation it stirred up with it's frank sexuality, but there's so much more to it. The Great War looms large, of course -- with its shattered men, the fractured relationships between the sexes, and the increasing assault on nature of a rampant mechanization and industrialization that was ushered in by the cataclysm on the Western Front.<br />
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In no particular order, here are some of the other books I read this year and enjoyed:<br />
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Lewis Lockwood's life of Beethoven, which taught me a thing or two amongst all the stuff about his music that went right over my head...<br />
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Willa Cather's <i>The Song of the Lark</i>, a lovely novel which chronicles the growth of an artist through the life of its heroine, Thea Kronborg.<br />
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<i>Indiana</i> by George Sand -- someone I'd like to read more from... (recommendations?)<br />
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<i>Incarnadine,</i> beautiful poems by Mary Szybist.<br />
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<i>My Own Country</i> by Abraham Verghese about treating AIDS patients in the 80s in the small cities and towns of Appalachia.<br />
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<br />Selenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16303596216112203977noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13573225.post-60248152028991707282014-12-28T18:41:00.000-05:002014-12-28T18:41:37.948-05:00What makes a classical music fan?<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM7azim11Qgp9pYXFXQ7T9AKeLmUaiWHI5XFcOa1zgNrA_3IN0TUh9DZxOocvW1IBVP2Dyasl05yqIvAISGdivaf033al1vK7J1tLuW5goh2_PxuwosH5kCa2cyFgD7WhN2VaAeQ/s1600/motherfalconband.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM7azim11Qgp9pYXFXQ7T9AKeLmUaiWHI5XFcOa1zgNrA_3IN0TUh9DZxOocvW1IBVP2Dyasl05yqIvAISGdivaf033al1vK7J1tLuW5goh2_PxuwosH5kCa2cyFgD7WhN2VaAeQ/s1600/motherfalconband.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Austin's Mother Falcon at Zanzabar</td></tr>
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Now that I'm writing about music on a fairly regular basis as a freelancer, I spend a lot of time <i>thinking</i> about music. One question I've been noodling is what makes me a fan of the opera and orchestra at a time when dwindling audiences and revenues for both seem to be the norm in many places?<br />
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One reason this question has bubbled to the surface for me is the recent arrival of our new music director for the Louisville Orchestra, Teddy Abrams. He's obviously on a mission to revitalize the orchestra - putting the musicians out into the community, trying to win new fans, and coming up with creative programs that will draw a more diverse audience. Kentucky Opera, under the direction of David Roth is also experimenting with programs that feature new works and more rarely performed operas. Will it work? How do people become classical music fans? Why am I one?<br />
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I'm not exactly the poster child for classical music fandom. First of all, unlike my husband, who was in band and his college orchestra, I totally lack any hands-on musical education. I regret now that I never tried to make music myself. I formed my passion for reading and writing so early that it pushed other pursuits to the margins. When you've already decided by age 8 or 9 what you want to be when you grow up, you tend to be laser-focused on that <i>one</i> thing. I never thought about being in the band or taking up an instrument, even though I had close friends and family who did. I'm sure I was so much in my own little world of books and scribbling that it didn't occur to anyone to distract me from it with encouraging words about music lessons. Well, at least I had a thing!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaNME0RDXppAayzJEW1GHMZ_073V2qCm1d7Ilz6tbiPrvRHXvWb6KXXIR4KYbaIOhzxJmuY-7PppaqdJroya_JoS4Dd1Jud9EpD-HPB0KzRD3AaazRiAJfU0cKa2vfDlvtLvMnfA/s1600/alpert-whippedcream.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaNME0RDXppAayzJEW1GHMZ_073V2qCm1d7Ilz6tbiPrvRHXvWb6KXXIR4KYbaIOhzxJmuY-7PppaqdJroya_JoS4Dd1Jud9EpD-HPB0KzRD3AaazRiAJfU0cKa2vfDlvtLvMnfA/s1600/alpert-whippedcream.jpg" height="200" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Part of Mom's collection</td></tr>
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Second, I grew up in a tiny town in Southwest Virginia in the very heart of country and bluegrass music where the nearest orchestra halls are hundreds of miles away. Family get-togethers often included (and still do) some kind of "picking." I love that kind of music, but I also learned to love a lot of other styles, and when I started to think about it, I realized that I had been listening to classical music since I was a child.<br />
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I played the vinyl we had at home from the time I could operate the turntable, so I credit my mother's record collection for my complete disregard of genre. It was everything from Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis to Sarah Vaughn and the Four Seasons. Chubby Checker and Connie Francis were early favorites, along with classical music compilations and Herb Alpert. My ten-year-old self was just as likely to be listening to "Twist" as Bizet's "Habanera." Willie and Waylon lay cheek by jowl with Pavarotti and the "Evita" soundtrack I had checked out from the local library.<br />
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The other big influence on my musical tastes was <i>Great Performances</i>. We usually could tune in about two-and-a-half TV stations where I grew up and one of those was PBS, thank God. I watched ballet, orchestra, and Met operas. I vividly remember "Rigoletto" with Pavarotti playing the Duke. I don't know why it made such an impression on me except it was very dark, and I was a little girl with a decided affinity for the macabre. There was also a production of "Lucia di Lammermoor" that I loved. Who can resist a madwoman in a bloody, white gown screeching down the staircase after dispatching her husband with a dagger on her wedding night? Now that's entertainment! At least to those of us raised on Appalachian murder ballads. (Belated kudos to Marilyn Mims who played Lucia when I finally saw it live at Kentucky Opera in the 90s.)<br />
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In college, I was very involved in drama, and of course, there was a lot of cross-over between the fine arts departments. I went to all my friends' concerts and recitals, so I never really lost interest in classical music, particularly opera, which combined music with theater. In graduate school, working two or three jobs and going to class, I was all about the free music opportunities. One of the more memorable was Sam Ramey performing a solo show one night on campus. Whoa! Mephistopheles ... <i>totally</i> dreamy. You can keep your Barihunks.<br />
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One thing I'll extrapolate from all of this, is that it's important to capture the imagination of kids if you want to grow the next generation of classical music fans. You don't have to explain the plot of an opera to them, and for God's sake, don't imply that classical music is good for them. Is anything more deadly than an adult telling a child what they should like? No one ever did that to me. Just let 'er rip and see what they latch on to. It doesn't have to make any sense. Arts programs in schools have fallen on hard times, but all it takes is that one magical musical experience for a child to be hooked. I don't think anything is more important than having the orchestra, ballet, opera, etc., get into schools and libraries as often as possible with their outreach programs. Clearly, this is a long-range plan.<br />
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And is it possible to turn the 20- and 30-somethings into classical music fans if they've never been exposed before? Well, it's at least as possible as convincing them that a handlebar mustache is a good look or that Pappy Van Winkle should be served as a jello shot. Social media is the key. If you can project yourself positively into the craft beer and cronut crowd, then you might lure them to a concert. If you make it cool, they will come.<br />
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Open it up, invite more people, make new friends. I think all these things help shake off the stuffiness that still clings to orchestras and opera companies. I know that I've heard more people talking about the orchestra in the last year than I ever have before. And as someone totally invested in having a healthy arts community in my city for years to come (because it's all about me!), I'm for anything that puts butts in the seats.<br />
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<br />Selenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16303596216112203977noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13573225.post-81090093603511702452014-11-02T21:52:00.000-05:002014-11-02T21:52:13.183-05:00The Shakespeare Project<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7pIGlThEqgm74VQ1QCGvJSqcjteSHOwkjacDNUvGYEC4_cI0oW95wY0tamchrdvUwPlgIFb5i_9TOwv5cI6IZTaQucee6Zn_YP-8VurJiSnEkfB3KCIAzQ5rKvKKkM3alv4qXow/s1600/shakespearebust.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7pIGlThEqgm74VQ1QCGvJSqcjteSHOwkjacDNUvGYEC4_cI0oW95wY0tamchrdvUwPlgIFb5i_9TOwv5cI6IZTaQucee6Zn_YP-8VurJiSnEkfB3KCIAzQ5rKvKKkM3alv4qXow/s1600/shakespearebust.jpg" height="157" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Shakespeare's bust in the ceiling<br /> of the Louisville Palace Theater.</b></td></tr>
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One of the shows I attended this fall was a very inventive production of <a href="http://actorstheatre.org/shows/loves-labours-lost-2014-2015/" target="_blank"><i>Love's Labor's Lost</i> at Actor's Theatre</a> in Louisville. Many years ago, this was the first Shakespeare play I ever saw performed at the Barter Theater in Abingdon, VA, near my hometown. Full of nostalgia, I reacquainted myself with it before going to Actor's, which reminded me why this new version chose to jettison entire scenes, conflate characters, and insert a mashup of famous Shakespeare lines from other plays. Much of the original is completely impenetrable to a modern audience! There are whole scenes of wordplay and jokes based on what was probably very topical at the time, but the references are so obscure now that the scholars can only guess at what precipitated the jokes in the first place.<br />
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The experience got me to thinking about plays I wanted to read again, and the handful of plays that I've still never read. So, I thought, why not work my way through all the plays, reading one a week from now through next spring? I might even finish by Shakespeare's birthday!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/06/06/arts/06MACBETH_SPAN/06MACBETH_SPAN-master675-v2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/06/06/arts/06MACBETH_SPAN/06MACBETH_SPAN-master675-v2.jpg" height="228" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Branagh as Macbeth </td></tr>
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I actually started in September with <i>LLL</i>. <i>Macbeth</i> was next because I've been mourning the fact that I didn't see Kenneth Branagh's production at the Armory this summer.<i> </i>Then, <i>Richard III</i>, who has been<i> </i>on my mind, since his <a href="http://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/dispute-over-bones-of-king-richard-iii-may-be-headed-to-u-k-court-1.1413656" target="_blank">poor bones are still being jostled about and fought over</a> by Leicester (where they were dug up) and York (where many think he should be buried). There has been an ongoing effort to revive his reputation, but Shakespeare is a pretty formidable spin doctor.<br />
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R3 is a treasure trove of over-the top insults, most of them flung about by the female characters in the play. <strong style="background-color: #fef3de; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; text-indent: -20px;">"</strong>Never hung poison on a fouler toad. Out of my sight! thou dost infect my eyes." So says Lady Anne on being wooed by toady Richard who has just killed her husband. "He that bereft thee, lady, of thy husband, Did it to help thee to a better husband." He's so wicked and witty. I love this scene, and I can't wait to see <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/benedict-cumberbatch-richard-iii-in-hollow-crown-sequel/" target="_blank">Benedict Cumberbatch's take on it in the excellent Hollow Crown</a> series.<br />
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I finished up September with one I had never read, <i>The Two Noble Kinsmen</i>. It's actually co-written by Shakespeare and his contemporary John Fletcher. It's a weird little play, adapted from Chaucer's "The Knight's Tale" in the <i>Canterbury Tales</i>. It's weird mainly because the action seems so improbable and then most of the really interesting stuff happens off-stage. The two kinsmen are friends and cousins, Arcite and Palamon, captured prisoners from Thebes being held in the court of Theseus, Duke of Athens. Though one is banished and one manages to escape, they are both in love with the Athenian Princess Emilia, which sets them at odds. There is no actual interplay between Emilia and either of her lovers, and then the contest that decides the winner is not dramatized. There aren't any particularly beautiful quotable quotes, which makes this play rather dull.<br />
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In October I read, <i>King Lear</i>, <i>Troilus and Cressida</i>, and <i>King John</i> (I'm running behind -- I should already have read <i>The Comedy of Errors</i>, which is next on my list). Maybe the most surprising of the three was the one with which I'm most familiar. I've read it, wrote about it, and seen it performed a couple of times. Reading <i>Lear</i> again, I found it more moving than ever. I think there are aspects of this play that you only appreciate as you get older -- when the potential reality of helplessness, dependency, and weakness is enough to scare the bejesus out of you. It's a play that is truly timeless in the way it depicts the humiliations of old age, the revelation of family loyalties, and the wolfishness of those eager to fill the gaps left by the superannuated.<br />
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I encountered <i>Troilus and Cressida</i> in graduate school, but it hadn't really stuck with me. It is most interesting for it's absolute bleakness and it's lack of any hero. It is set during the Trojan War, and provides a scathing perspective on wars based on empty and pointless causes. Hector is the most level-headed and he is often the most blunt in his criticism of the stupidity of the war, but even he is blinded by the idea of "glory and honor" won in battle. His brutal end is one of the most searing commentaries on those twin ideals in literature -- at least until the Great War poets, Sassoon and Owen come along. I would like to see a production of this one day. It is considered to be distinctly modern in the way that it deconstructs any kind of sentimental or romantic ideas about war, love, attachment, or heroism. It was written around the same time as <i>Hamlet </i>(1602). Shakespeare must have been in a pretty grim frame of mind for awhile.<br />
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The last that I've finished is <i>King John</i>, which I'd never read and had no familiarity with even the basic plot. I was kind of expecting it to be a dud (as Shakespeare goes). Oh, but no! I loved it. It has some of the most entertaining dialogue in Shakespeare, and a great character in Falconbridge (aka Philip the Bastard, aka Richard Plantagenet), the illegitimate son of Richard Coeur de Lion. In Shakespeare's world, bastard sons aren't usually the good guys (i.e., the horrible Edmund of Lear), but in King John, he's one of the few truly noble characters in his actions, an irreverent silver-tongued devil in his speech. When his brother has him declared illegitimate and leaves him without land or fortune, Falconbridge declares his loyalty to King John (also his uncle). He gracefully excuses his mother's faithlessness, thus:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Some sins do bear their privilege on earth,<br />And so doth yours; your fault was not your folly:<br />Needs must you lay your heart at his dispose,<br />Subjected tribute to commanding love,<br />Against whose fury and unmatched force<br />The aweless lion could not wage the fight,<br />Nor keep his princely heart from Richard's hand.<br />He that perforce robs lions of their hearts<br />May easily win a woman's.</blockquote>
Another thing I like about King John are the female characters. There is the intimidating Queen Elinor, John's mother, and the rather crazy Constance, mother of Arthur, a claimant to John's throne. Here is her speech, when she finds out Arthur is dead:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
No, I defy all counsel, all redress,<br />But that which ends all counsel, true redress,<br />Death, death; O amiable lovely death!<br />Thou odouriferous stench! sound rottenness!<br />Arise forth from the couch of lasting night,<br />Thou hate and terror to prosperity,<br />And I will kiss thy detestable bones<br />And put my eyeballs in thy vaulty brows<br />And ring these fingers with thy household worms<br />And stop this gap of breath with fulsome dust<br />And be a carrion monster like thyself:<br />Come, grin on me, and I will think thou smilest<br />And buss thee as thy wife. Misery's love,<br />O, come to me!</blockquote>
I would thank that any actress would relish the chance to speak these wildly over-the-top speeches!<br />
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I'll try to catch up in November, but the fall arts season has been a busy one. Now that the time has changed and I'm facing what I expect to be a long and dreary winter, I expect I'll have more time to cuddle up next to Will. Here's hoping he makes the journey to springtime a little more bearable.Selenahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16303596216112203977noreply@blogger.com0